'My heart breaks for all that the people in these beautiful houses, the fruit of beautiful achievements, have been lost.' Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.

The great British historian Arnold Toynbee created the challenge and response theory of history, in which civilisations — like people — flourish or collapse on their ability to respond to adversity. By that measurement, American civilisation is in free fall.
There is not a single disaster the country has faced in recent years that has not, sometimes within hours of it happening, resulted in driving Americans apart rather than bringing them together. Mere weeks after the 9/11 attacks, people were accusing each other of war-mongering, or appeasement, or anti-Muslim prejudice, or complacency about “fifth columns”, or an unforgivable lack of preparedness before the attacks. Hurricane Katrina was followed by bitter debates over the rapidity, fairness and the adequacy of the federal response.
As for the country’s response to Covid, it hardly seems an overstatement to say that the 19th-century debate over slavery was no less vitriolic than the strife, often vicious, incited by masks, lockdowns and vaccines. The proverbial visitor from another planet would have thought that this argument over a health crisis — it killed over a million Americans, after all — was in fact an argument over an election. Maybe the contestations around Covid created the atmosphere for the contestation of an election.
In one perspective, of course, even the most heated differences signify a democracy’s health. Authoritarian regimes don’t tolerate altercations in the name of freedom. But disaster is different. There was hot debate in Britain over the Munich Agreement, but there was no debate over how to respond to Germany’s invasion of Poland one year later. In a crisis, healthy civilisations respond to the crisis. They don’t turn on themselves.
It took no time at all for the recriminations to start flying after the worst wildfires in the history of California broke out in Los Angeles. Within hours of the flames taking hold, the New York Times ran, in short order, articles accusing the LA mayor, Karen Bass, of not having had dry brush near houses cleared away, and of not having sufficient water to fight the fires. The newly minted firefighting experts at the newspaper even accused the LA fire department of not having updated its tactics for fighting fires. This was followed shortly afterward, with a sort of mechanical cluelessness, by an article titled “When Disaster Hits, Trump is the Blamer in Chief”.
The problem here was twofold. First, these articles appeared while people were being burned alive, while people were watching their houses, their possessions and their memories being destroyed, while LA firefighters were working 24-hour shifts in horrific conditions to save people’s lives and property. The “gotcha” style of American journalism — it wasn’t just the Times — that has prevailed since Watergate surely could have been restrained until the catastrophe had come to an end.
The second problem with the predictable banquet of accusation was that it wasn’t strictly accurate. What the media was covering was not the result of any kind of impartial investigation. It was the result of the usual infighting among a municipality’s politicians and their surrogates. The media were reporting on a political quarrel over who was to blame, not on who was actually to blame. Apparently, the fire chief, Kristin Crowley, had protested Bass cutting the fire department’s budget in some areas (in fact the 2025 budget ended up rising by over 7%). But city officials fighting with a mayor over how much money they will get for their agencies and departments is hardly a scandal. It’s never anything but murky, either.
It’s a time-honoured convention for newspapers, in America anyway, to end their news articles with a quote from an expert, or some figure of authority, with which to delicately insinuate a moral judgment. The New York Times does this to a fare-thee-well. Its article critical of Bass’s response ended with the customary authority figure, who delivered his, and the article’s, stern judgment of Bass’s performance. “’This is a massive failure of epic proportions,’ he said.”
It was an impressive way to finish, firm with reassuring finality. There was one problem, though. The authority figure was Rick Caruso, whom Bass had defeated in the 2022 mayoral election. To say that he had an axe to grind with regard to Bass would be an understatement.
To make matters worse, the Times had already quoted Caruso, a billionaire real-estate developer, dramatically lamenting the shortage of water, the Times adding, with nary a sliver of critical distance — the Times’ news articles have always been artfully choreographed — that Caruso himself had hired his very own team of private firefighters. The Times writes: “All night, [Caruso] said, [the private firefighters] were telling him that water was in short supply.” In other words, the great liberal newspaper, almost singlehandedly responsible for the woke divisions that have helped rip American society apart, relied on the testimony of a politically embittered billionaire to discredit the efforts of a publicly elected official. The paper didn’t even inform its readers whether Caruso’s private team had enough water in the end or not.
That was the “gotcha” response to the catastrophe. The political response was even more irresponsible. What was the true cause of the LA apocalypse, according to a chorus of ideologically motivated voices? An unusually heavy season of rain, which created an abundance of foliage, which then dried into an enormous tinderbox during a long drought? The powerful gusts of high wind known as the Santa Ana winds? Gusts reaching 100mph capable of driving embers in countless wild directions at once? The historically unprecedented event of six wildfires raging in California at the same time, which would have exhausted the water supply no matter how full it was? Winds fanning fires into a conflagration that no firefighter could enter, and that no planes of helicopters bearing water and retardant could fly through?
Nope. According to experts, such as the conservative commentator Scott Jennings on CNN (where reporters like Nick Watt and Natasha Chen were risking the their lives to report on the fires), it was all the fault of “woke”: “We have DEI… and… I’m wondering now, if your house was burning down, how much do you care what colour the firefighters are?”
Jennings, and others like him, including an increasingly deranged Elon Musk, were responding to a sentence on the LA Fire Department’s website that described a commitment to hiring more black firefighters. Even David Mamet, stunning screenwriter and America’s greatest living playwright, whose moral imagination is the product of some sort of divine spark, was swept up in these pages into the anti-DEI groupthink that is now the default response to DEI groupthink.
Like many people, I think DEI has been a poisonous and divisive plague on true fairness and opportunity. But it is hard to see how a conscientious commitment to diversifying LA’s Fire Department, which would require more, not less money, in the budget, could have caused the LA fires, or made them worse once they had begun. Unless Bass had been moving large sums of money away from basic firefighting needs into creating and enforcing DEI polices, which no one has said she did, it is hard to see how her declared to commitment to DEI — often boilerplate without meaning anyway — could have affected the city’s response to the wildfires one bit.
So much for how America — or, rather, the people Americans permit to represent reality to them — responded to the fires in LA. We are left with the wildfires themselves. As I write, they are threatening to grow and spread again in a resurgence of high wind. Now is not the time for a literary interpretation of an event that has torn lives apart, and taken lives. But one fact, and one image, beg to be understood in a different key.
The stark fact is that — and I gratefully get this information from the Times — so far as one can see, most, if not all the people who have been killed in the fires, have been poor, or of modest means, and most have been black. The stark image is of gorgeous mansions burning in isolation, on cliffs overlooking the ocean. They are images of the zenith of American success, which is the consummation of the American Dream, which is to rise above your fellow Americans, your fellow humans, your community; to ascend beyond all those less fortunate, or not fortunate at all, who are the first to suffer and die, down below, and to live in magnificent isolation. I don’t begrudge the magnificence to anyone. I wish it for my children. And my heart breaks for all that the people in those beautiful houses, the fruit (often) of beautiful achievements, have lost.
But the media does their customary thing, breaking the tragedy down to individual stories, stories that you can identify yourself with and thus use to control the inexplicable and incomprehensible by fitting them into the safe confines of your life. You are left with individual stories, cut off from each other, and from a shared reality with each other. You are left thinking what you would do in that situation, how you would feel.
And you wonder if, amid all the unspeakable destruction, an illusion is also being destroyed, and a reality revealed. The illusion is of American happiness as an invincible solitude. The reality is wholly different. Blame comes easily to Americans because we are all alone. Because there is no “we”. Because our isolation from each other is allowing ghouls to waltz into our midst. And this isolation is allowing us to burn, and to watch each other burn. It is allowing some to relish the conflagration. It is compelling the rest of us — but there is no “us”, only “me”, and “them” — to point fingers instead of, as moist as it may sound, linking arms.
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SubscribeLee is deflecting with all the “woke” and “DEI” stuff. This disaster has been in the making well before even O’bummer took office in 2008. I worked a year for the National Park Service as a result of the Stimulus causing the NPS to look for seasonal hires for that year. California’s forestry and wildfire debacles were a joke back even then. If you want detailed breakdown of how we go here I would recommend this article by Keely Covello who writes for the publication UNWON on Substack that focuses on rural and rancher news. I think you will find it enlightening.
https://www.americaunwon.com/p/why-los-angeles-burned
The Klamath Dam was removed in 2023. – Crazy Clowns. Spain on steroids
To equate the contentiousness of Covid responses in the U.S. with the Civil War reveals this article to be hyperbolic bunk. 9/11 was a quarter a century ago, not “recent” and the US response in its aftermath was, not the divisiveness described, but a astounding (and misguided) unity that launched two stupid wars. To find an example of the “proper” way to respond the author has to reach back to the cobwebbed realm of 1939 and elides the historical fact that, until Pearl Harbor, the US was very divided about entering the war.
To excuse the lapses in leadership vis a vis the LA fires is to ignore that California wildfires have not been unpredictable one-off natural catastrophes. They are clearly a massive repetitive threat that demands robust preparedness that has not materialized despite yearly recurrence. The failure to bolster infrastructure when money has been wasted on boondoggles like the multibillion dollar LA train foolishness is something that elected officials and their appointees are rightfully called to answer for. And yes, the diversion of government attention and resources to DEI nonsense when an obvious existential threat looms is immoral. The color of a firefight matters not an iota, but spending tens of millions to fund DEI offices within underfunded fire departments is mismanagement of scarce resources and quite appropriate to challenge in the wake of another profound California disaster.
Perhaps the American way is to get noisy and belligerent in the press and government. I suppose the author might suggest a better response for catastrophe would be to follow the recently exposed UK model and sweep it under the rug: “move along, nothing to see here, let’s not get all divisive over a wee bit of endemic organized gang rape, no point in looking to blame anyone.”
First word that came to my mind was hyperbolic. The writer is engaging in the very thing he criticizes.
“let’s not get all divisive over a wee bit of endemic organized gang rape, no point in looking to blame anyone.”
You mean apart from these ten, convicted members of the Rochdale and Oldham grooming gang, whose colour mugnshots appeared in The Telegraph?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/02/labour-defends-blocking-grooming-inquiry-keir-starmer-cps/
That didn’t sit right with me either. To equate what’s happening today with the conflict that defined the first 70 years of the nation’s history and led to a war that remains the bloodiest and costliest in American history, eclipsing even WWII, was a step too far. Americans are perhaps as ideologically divided now as they were then, but I can’t imagine any scenario where there’s an actual war fought over this. I just can’t see Americans getting together and murdering each other in a deliberate organized way over the effectiveness of masking or DEI initiatives, or climate change, or any of the other great points of conflict, precisely because none of these issues are actually as civilization defining as slavery was. Media hyperbole motivated by advertising revenue and getting people’s attention is the culprit, but is even more hyperbolic overreactions to the hyperbolic overreactions helpful? Two wrongs don’t make a right here. The one conflict that’s civilization defining enough to maybe lead to possible conflict is globalism vs. populism, but it still would require the right conditions and a serious crisis. At any rate, it rather looks like that one is already well on its way to being resolved through international conflict and populist uprisings.
I agree that Siegel’s Civil War to Covid comparison is hyperbole. So is the notion that NYT is “almost single-handedly responsible” for woke excess and its divisive impact. (This was promoted in universities and many other places too, like the Washington Post, MSNBC, and the Guardian. Also, the individuals who bought into it bear some of that responsibility).
But the part about the rush to blame, and rise of ghoulish glee in the suffering of fellow citizens regarded as enemies, is on point.
“It is allowing some to relish the conflagration”. In a rare turn from Siegel, that’s something of an understatement. A few years ago, some woke crusaders celebrated deaths among those who refused the vaccine. Ghoulish. You can dislike people without hating them, or even hate them without celebrating their agonizing deaths. Time to turn down the heat.
It is but the idea that this would be the time to stop doing condemnation seems irrational. Unlike some circumstances you have glaring lack of preparation for a risk that should have been obvious.
I’m not interested in blaming specific people nor do I think there’s one cause here. However, there is obviously a culture of incompetence that can’t be allowed to continue in LA or other cities.
Condemnation is not a near synonym for criticism or scrutiny. When people condemn they often aren’t even trying be helpful or bring about change, but indulging the need to feel right and find definite villains, largely based on preexisting hatreds and agendas.
Putting aside semantics, I agree there’s widespread incompetence in California, though we’re not alone, and it’s not just a blue-state thing. Like the privatization of the energy grid that contributed to over 200 freezing deaths in Texas in 2021.
I’m not a fan of Newsome but I don’t think the way Trump (along with others) is denouncing him is helpful or even well-intended. Then again, the two men have played a nasty and malicious blame game with each other for years. When people blamed Trump for every Covid death—as if no deaths would have occurred without his actions or inactions!—they indulged in simplistic condemnation too. Some people were pretty much fine with the violence in the summer of Floyd, but not on Jan. 6th. Or vice versa. It’s extremely tribal, along quite predictable fault lines.
I’ll risk a hyperbole of my own when I say that I think we’re only a few major missteps from something like a Second Civil War. Some want that, and I wish they’d rethink it. For those who don’t: I wish a higher percentage of Trump supporters would take their victory lap with more good will and less spite. And I wish more who oppose him would take a pause and not crank up the panic and blame machine so early, like 2017 all over again. Pay attention, but give things a chance to work out better than you fear they will—whatever worries you most. I realize that wishes have no redemption value, but I don’t think I’m asking’ for the moon here.
The Civil war idea is vastly overblown. It amplifies the silliness on the far extremes of both sides. Maybe 20% of the total population in the USA get that fired up about this stuff. The other 80% either don’t pay attention or think it is social media madness. I see absolutely no danger of the Midwest or other parts of the country lighting up with fighting over squabbles in politics. If that were the case, then the fighting may have started when the FBI Swat Team raided Trump castle or if the assassin had killed him. I saw no signs of either
Maybe so and I hope you’re correct. But if the middle 80 percent stays so disengaged and underrepresented, the warring extremes can start bigger fights and worse fires. And I don’t think we saw a real preview of the counterfactual when Trump escaped death by an inch. Note that I said a few major missteps.
Even if actual large-scale bloodshed is nowhere on our realistic horizon, the way so many of us talk to each other these days has consequences that can range from heightened ill-will to actual violence. I say this as someone who doesn’t want violence or destruction but does, in moments, have an undefeated appetite for confrontation. At times, I’m still guilty of hostile accusations and “incendiary”rhetoric (hope no one’s noticed). I see myself as mostly benevolent, but too reactive, and prone to surges of anger.
I doubt that’s rare among the middle 80%. Or that it’s impossible for that middle to shrink, to 75%, 70%, etc. Majority support isn’t needed for outbursts of violence. Let’s wage a nonviolent campaign against the warring extremes.
The privatisation of Texas’ energy grid didn’t cause the blackouts; it was the government’s insistence that they replace their gas pump systems from gas to electricity (on the grounds it was “greener”) that meant local power failures cascaded in to gas delivery failures to power stations.
I knew someone would find fault with that wording. Perhaps rightly so. Would you admit that it was gross mismanagement with Republicans, elected or not, in charge?
I read your comments on both threads so I’ll respond here. I do think there’s use value in your philosophy of tempering dissent from both sides when it crosses into hostility. It can also be an effective way to approximate reality if your inputs are broad enough to be comprehensive and analytic enough at weighting indisputable facts with value judgments.
In other words, if you’re conscious of personal bias (which you seem to be), can properly identify (Steelman) and classify a group’s general viewpoint and then weight it against an opposing group’s viewpoint than you can generally deduce some truth principle out of a situation.
We all weight facts differently based on prior experience and our personal values. There’s certainly a limit to the accuracy of any group judgment system. However, you seem adverse to the idea that anyone can accurately classify viewpoints or create group metanarratives. While I do think its healthy to be skeptical, I think one can be broad enough to ascribe certain views to certain groups based on evidence.
For instance these are pretty indisputable inputs: Widespread Institutional capture by left wing ideologues predated Trump. Practice of Critical Theory in our institutions was previously called “Political Correctness.” Critical Theory views all opposition as F#scist. Intersectionality evolved out of Critical Theory and DEI evolved out of Intersectionality. Intersectionality is not interested in compromise. Ordinary Democrats (mostly liberals) were unable to prevent radicals from seizing the party platform so they acquiesced. The result of that acquiesance is reflected by incompetent Institutional hierarchies. Incompetent Institutional hierarchies eventually reduce the quality of life for most people regardless of Political affiliation.
If these inputs are correct than it’s difficult to know how declining quality of life could be reversible without a sea change of Democrat leadership with a new governing philosophy. It seems that a competent Democrat governing philosophy would greatly quiet the dysfunctional hostility issue that you’re concerned about.
So the question becomes is the “root cause” of dysfunction caused by aggressive partisanship or a reaction to ideas that produce bad results? If the latter than it would seem the distasteful “Owning the Libs” mentality is a symptom not a cause of societal dysfunction.
Even granting the validity of most of that, which I do, does not establish the wisdom of pushing for the opposite extreme, or of deciding that there are “no enemies to my right”. Any more, or much more anyway, than it would if I reversed the directions and constructed a plausible counterargument about the rising threat from the right, which can be done. Although I wont go too far into it here, for a few reasons: 1) (relative) brevity and time 2) If I pushed it hard some who are at least somewhat open to hearing me out will tune out or go on tilt and 3) quite likely vote my comment off the island for some multiple of 6 hours. Number 3 has happened to me many times here, sometimes unfairly.
Briefly: I think it’s also pretty indisputable that extremists on the right have ramped up and won more converts in the Trump era. While I agree his rise is more a symptom than a cause, his idiosyncratic “yoogeness” is an accelerant, and his trash talk approach, combined with nods to fringe actors like the p r o u d boys and Q a n o n, is a major enabler. I see a real threat to such democracy as we have from both sides.
Vilification and even de-humanization of the Political Enemy has become worse in either direction than it’s been since 1978, when I moved here from Canada, as a 7-year-old with U.S. citizenship through my mom. It may have been worse in 1965-1975 or so, but I think that’s a close call. Both sides do it, although it’s more openly practiced at the top among some Republicans, at present: “vermin”; “evil”; “very bad people”. But Democrats, and of course Progressives, do it online all the time, and the way many top Democrats seethe about the Other Side is about as bad. The mutual contempt and condemnation are clear.
I’m actually more persuadable about many things than I tend to let on. I don’t come here just to vent, thinking I have nothing to learn from other subscribers. Though I act like too much of a know-it-all, I don’t think I actually do. And I make a real effort not to treat my opinions and preferences as if they are derived from objective truth. Sometimes I can’t really do that in the moment, but I have a follow-up self-monitor that seems to help with that, eventually.
One thing that really frustrates me is a person who is both intelligent and close-minded, insightful and ferociously tribal. I can’t help but try to poke holes in the oxygen-starved, prejudiced logic of people I perceive that way.
I’ve learned that you’re not like that at all. But at times, fair-minded commenters like you and Steve Jolly still participate in a one-sided confirmation loop, wherein few outside ideas are even entertained, except as fuel for mockery and condemnation.
That’s a lot like what I see in the NYT comments, but in sociopolitical reverse. I’m really tired of it on both sides. I don’t wanna pretend I’m right and good all the time or have the answers to life’s biggest questions—especially not for anyone other than me. I want to live in more functional society, one that is liberal in the broadest, truest sense of the word. I also have some traditional leanings, and I’m not down on Western Culture as whole, far from it.
The BTL exchanges here on less politically-charged articles are often much more vibrant, fun, and worthwhile. Unfortunately, more and more people put a high-voltage political charge into damn near everything! Maybe I should stay off the more radioactive boards. But I doubt I’ll manage that, especially when it comes to my home state, with which I have a lifelong long-hate relationship. Part of it is actually on fire, on top of the figurative flames that are spreading across the homeland, ahead of Inauguration Day.
For anyone who’s read this far, thanks (and my apologies). Let’s try to focus on what it is we stand for a little more, less on who we stand against.
*We can pick up these issues again but let me add:
1) In your characterization of people in California government as a group—which I rejected to a cascade of downvotes—I think there’s very little steel in the Strawman. I point this out because I doubt you think it’s a fair broadbrush statement yourself.
2) The chicken and egg question is not that important. “They started it” becomes irrelevant when the We you align yourself with becomes a full participant in the squabbling and condemnation game. Especially when the mantra turns into: “They started it. We will finish it”. As if some conclusive, lasting victory can be won against 40-50 of your fellow citizens. Without amplified ill-will and hostility that will spill into the streets.
Even in the bluest or reddest places, we have to live among some we disagree with. That doesn’t have to be a nightmare, Now, quieting and thinning the ranks of the most extreme 10%—on either side—is far more achievable, and creates a shared opponent for the left and right: rank extremists. As a rule, I think it’s better not to vilify even zealous ideologues and vicious partisans—many of whom may change their tune, at least in part—but I do want their collective volume turned down. Just to be clear, I am not trying to put any such label on you.
Complaining about “diviseness” is a futile exercise when your primary institutions get captured by concepts like Intersectionality which informs DEI. The entire point of all Marxist variants is to divide people via Conflict Theory. Why would you expect a population inundated by a decade of intentionally divisive crisis mongerers not to be reactionary when the Cobra Effect of the ideology’s incompetence becomes glaringly obvious?
The primary purpose of government is to keep people safe from direct threats. I don’t recall many complaining about Florida mismanaging or being unprepared for Cat 4 and 5 hurricanes. The government in Florida under DeSantis recognizes the threat and prepares appropriately with competence. When a storm hits you have serious people responding with serious solutions logistically streamlined to minimize loss of life.
That is not the case in California because its government believes the primary role is to be cultural ambassadors for sweeping global justice causes. The day to day grind of competent governance is secondary (if that) to demonstrating moral superiority.
Serious roles need to go to serious leaders. Serious leaders don’t spend their time in these situations deflecting blame. They aren’t worried about public perception in the present moment because they understand their primary role is competent governance.
“That is not the case in California because its government believes the primary role is to be cultural ambassadors for sweeping global justice causes. The day to day grind of competent governance is secondary (if that) to demonstrating moral superiority”.
You’re making generalizations that don’t reflect the way most people, even those in government, think here in California. Unfortunately, a vocal and agitated minority pretty much does, and too many others have gone along to avoid conflict or avoid being targeted. But that’s changing. Please don’t buy into some grand (“non-mainstream” media) narrative about how Californians are.
Who voted for those people and their respective policies that have catastrophically collided to the show on global display today?
Certainly only a small minority who wanted social justice issues prioritized over quality-of-life issues like safety and reasonable public order. And it’s not as though many Republican politicians these days don’t strike poses of moral superiority. What’s different about this era is the number who do that on both sides. I don’t think you can say that the so-called Party of No stays focused on the “day to day grind” that affects most people’s lives. Both major parties are an embarrassment, for different reasons we can argue about but which largely speak for themselves. #viable-third-party-now
I’m not on X and wasn’t when it was called Twitter but maybe this can become a meme?
I don’t understand and have no interest in entertaining political divisions as an excuse to run cover for the very simple question I asked.
Are you claiming a small minority of registered voters, voted in the people currently in elected positions obviously and potentially accountable for the fires in and around LA?
*Edited to correct the erroneous, predictive text assumptions in the word “cover”. And, now, in reply.
There is some sort of tech issue with my account, AJ. Our conversation disappeared for about a day and I am now forced to carry on our conversation from here as the option to reply has vanished.
“I’m saying that voters who choose the least odious of two bad options don’t actively vote in favor of specific bad outcomes.”
I don’t believe voters are actively voting for the consequences of elections. I believe they are voting for the candidates they feel will best bring their prioritized values to be policy of their community, starting in the primaries.
I’m saying that voters who choose the least odious of two bad options don’t actively vote in favor of specific bad outcomes. And that the claim that it all would have been magically wonderful under Republican leadership is false and ahistorical. California examples: the huge social unrest under governor Ronald Reagan (1967-1973) and the severe, poorly managed floods under Schwarzenegger. Are red states superbly well prepared for tornadoes and floods? Are the consequences of Acts of God the sole fault of those in leadership positions?
Putting aside these admittedly rhetorical questions, which I’m quite sure you’ll find unwelcome and off-topic, reckoning needs to occur after things go badly awry, to some extent unnecessarily. But condemnation and rushes to judgment don’t help, nor are the worst such reactions even intended to help. They become point-scoring opportunities in an increasingly stupid, winner-take-all game that doesn’t reflect the real world.
You attempt to turn a complex reality into a “very simple question”. I don’t think you’re open to an answer that differs much from the one you’ve already landed on, or perhaps been led to by your media diet.
I live in North Central Florida and I agree that the state and local governments, as well as the permanent residents, prepare for hurricanes even before storm season begins every June. There is cooperation between everyone, and politics and other divisive matters are put aside to prepare for these storms, and to deal with their aftermath.
This has been happening long before DeSantis became governor. He is an excellent administrator and did perform well considering the horrible hurricane season last year. It’s what is expected during hurricane season.
There’s nothing like a Cat 3 or 4 coming out of the Gulf to make people realize there are more important things than politics.
Fair enough Paula. It just seems to me that DeSantis has taken disaster prep to the next level but you’re right that there’s a long history of competent response in Florida.
Has Biden been to California yet?
He was, but only because he happened to be in the state for the birth of his great granddaughter, which he felt compelled to inject into his public statement on the wildfires. Then he quickly flew back to D.C.
“As for the country’s response to Covid, it hardly seems an overstatement to say that the 19th-century debate over slavery was no less vitriolic than the strife, often vicious, incited by masks, lockdowns and vaccines”.
And such is the very nature of democracy and if you’re unsure try a dose of dictatorship.
And to date in the US 1,215,016 on both or many sides have died. That’s rather more than the writer’s 350,000.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_totaldeaths_select_00
Now separate that number into people who died WITH covid vs. those who died FROM it.
To summarise, we should be grateful to our left wing, woke political masters. They never make mistakes and the things that go wrong are always the fault of nasty right wingers and their supporters in the media. Anybody who describes our beloved leaders as corrupt and incompetent idiots should be immediately arrested and face life imprisonment without trial.
Even pretending to take that from this article makes no sense. The author blames the New York Times for almost the entire divisive scourge known as wokeness. And he indicts the media at large for telling fractured, individual stories that, he argues, help to keep us much more a nation of Me instead of We. In his opinionated, overstated way, the author is calling out finger-pointing on all sides, and making a plea for more unity and good will. It’d be better if Siegel’s way of doing that wasn’t itself somewhat divisive and full of blame, but he has a point.
So what would Lee Siegel have Americsns do? Rally in unison in a big kumbaya and so sweep all critical scrutiny and accountability under the rug because to do otherwise is to, according to him, risk nothing less than the breakdown of civilization itself? Hyperbole, anyone? And for how long are we to silence ourselves? Until a time determined by the all-wise Lee Siegel?
Compassion? We apparently have it in spades judging from the media’s breathless play-by-play every time another star’s house burns to the ground. Yet I’ve learned not one name of any of those in the hills of Appalachia whose lives were swept away by the diluvian apocalypse in September. Apropos to nothing, our first reaction then was to send off a sizable contribution to a local church-based aid organization, to “link arms” in some way with those folks who were true victims if an unpredictable disaster. Not so for LA. Why? Tapped out, maybe. But perhaps it’s because we’ve been scolded for far too long by West Coast wizards of smart that it’s hard to muster sympathy when Mother Nature smacks ‘em good on the keister.
I lived 13 years in NorCal. You live on tenter hooks from about late August until that first raindrop falls. Yet fire is as natural as rain and, unfortunately, far more commonplace. Whoever posted the link to americanunwon.com, thanks. What an eloquent summation of the idiotic, criminal policies that have cost us all trillions and returned nothing but misery.
And how did that work out for the “health” of British civilisation?
It continued to exist as opposed to caving like the rest of Europe. (Okay, we had the channel to hold up the barbarians.) And, without the British bridgehead in 1944, Europe would look very different today.
However the author wants to spin this, the fire represents a massive failure of govt. The only question is whether it was intentional.
NOT clearing away underlying debris was purposely done. So was diverting water into the ocean, failing to top off reservoirs, and not building dams as promised. DEI is a sideshow that makes the bad look worse.
When govt fails in its most fundamental role, are people supposed to ignore that?
The standard of journalism in this blog is such that I don’t think I’ll continue to subscribe to it.
Not only is this article biased, it ignores the comments made by a female Fire Chief to the effect that if a female did not have the strength to rescue a man then he was in the wrong place at the wrong time!!
An extraordinary comment and gives a lie to this article.
I can understand Siegel’s sentiment. Once upon a time, a tragedy happened, news went out, people gasped and sympathized for the victims, and then, after months of research and legwork, some reporter might stumble over some misdeed that led to the disaster or contributed to it being worse than it was. They didn’t refrain from reporting about these misdeeds out of respect for victims or some greater sense of empathy. It just used to be a lot harder to get even basic information. If you wanted to look at news articles from weeks or months before, you had to go to a library, find an article, and pore over the microfiche until you found what you were looking for. If you wanted to know about the public decisions of government bodies on mundane things like budget allocations, you probably had to go through the public records of the government body in question. Now it’s all documented on the Internet and computer systems can search in minutes what would take a human being hours or days to do. It’s hard to overstate the effect the Internet and computers have had on our civilization. These days, I can research anything I want and check any claim I make in these comments by switching tabs and running a google search that takes anywhere from thirty seconds to fifteen or twenty minutes depending on how distracted I get on how many random tangents just hopping from one interesting bit of information to the next. People have always played the blame game. People didn’t wait some customary time period after the sinking of the Lusitania to blame the Germans for sinking it. The story ran the next day and people were outraged right then. Go back further and consider the importance of the publicity generated by the battles of Lexington and Concord, the shot heard round the world that started the American Revolution. People will react immediately whenever they get the information and it’s fairly clear who’s to blame. These days, it’s easier for journalists to play the blame game in real time because the information is available in real time. They don’t have wait days or months to get the information and run a story. In fact, they have reason to do so as quickly as possible, to be the first to run the story and gain advantage over the competition and prestige for their news organization. This is what’s really going on here. I will grant that with natural disasters like these wildfires, or Katrina, or COVID, it’s not entirely accurate or fair to lay blame at the feet of any public official. There’s an awful lot of hindsight going on. I will grant that these are divided times and both sides are prone to using events to push political agendas. Witness the speed at which gun control activists sound off after every mass shooting. That being said, this is not failure of empathy on the part of Americans who read the news they are presented with. I don’t think this represents some great failure of our civilization or represents some drastic break from historical normal. It’s just that the technology has changed and given rise to new vices, or perhaps just brought the old ones out into the spotlight. Armchair disaster management is just something we’ll have to live with I’m afraid.
Much of the commentary centered on whether or not these fires had been caused or made worse by CO2 emissions. What one would expect to be a scientific and technical issue has somehow become a highly contentious partizan political debate.
This article is total BS
Rubbish. When the author, if he can be called that, starts to call people names, it proves he is an emotional and unserious shill. Lost me right there, and this “blaming” happens very, very soon after every catastrophe from the beginning of time. I imagine the folks who died, whose homes burned down, and who are displaced would think this guy is totally full of shit. I am not in their group, but that is certainly what I believe.
This man belongs at the Guardian or worse.
A.J. Mac, an Unherd “tech glitch” with the commenting features forces my reply out amongst independent comments.
“I’m saying that voters who choose the least odious of two bad options don’t actively vote in favor of specific bad outcomes.”
I do not disagree with this statement and firmly believe you will have a difficult time finding someone that does. I believe people generally cast their votes on behalf of their personally-ranked values and upon the belief that those values will be legislated into policy and law at each respective level of governance, initiating in the primaries. I also firmly believe that the majority of California voters quite clearly carry a collective prioritization of subordinating adequate and functional preparedness to luxury beliefs and Intersectional Optics, for Acts of God, well-understood to be a threat to the particular area.
“And that the claim that it all would have been magically wonderful under Republican leadership is false and ahistorical.”
I never made this claim. Was this accusation meant for me? The “Democrat” and “Republican” label are of very, very little value to me, especially at the polls.
“California examples: the huge social unrest under governor Ronald Reagan (1967-1973) and the severe, poorly managed floods under Schwarzenegger.”
Do you think California has considered electing the pampered, disconnected, inexperienced, Products of Hollywood into the gubernational office may have been their problem? Additionally, Hollywood Republican is an oxymoron.
“Are red states superbly well prepared for tornadoes and floods?”
Define “red state”.
“Are the consequences of Acts of God the sole fault of those in leadership positions?”
In part, with respect to adequate preparedness for threats known to be an issue, yes. The remaining accountability belongs to the voters.
“Putting aside these admittedly rhetorical questions, which I’m quite sure you’ll find unwelcome and off-topic, …”
Mostly just irrelevant musing and an attempt to muddy the water of problem identification.
“…reckoning needs to occur after things go badly awry, to some extent unnecessarily.”
Great to hear! Will the voters reckon with their own thought processes prior to next election?
“But condemnation and rushes to judgment don’t help, nor are the worst such reactions even intended to help. They become point-scoring opportunities in an increasingly stupid, winner-take-all game that doesn’t reflect the real world.”
Elections have consequences. Deal with it, like an adult.
“You attempt to turn a complex reality into a “very simple question”.
I asked a simple question. You twisted my simple question into a convoluted web of unnecessary complexities and a defensive soapbox in an effort to absolve any accountability.
“I don’t think you’re open to an answer that differs much from the one you’ve already landed on, or perhaps been led to by your media diet.”
I don’t think you can honestly be open to any different result that the current given the refusal to engage in an honest, deep examination of the source of your leadership failures.
Is a career in Academia your livelihood?
Shorter version of this piece: “Criticizing leftist regimes is divisive, so be nice and stop it. Or else.”