What has happened in LA is beyond comprehension -- and yet it isn't
When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there's going to be water. We don't control the water supply. We're there to protect lives and property.
She said her firefighters 'did absolutely everything they could do to rescue and save people's lives and property.
— LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley
Trump is not king.
Yet, he has been treated as such for far too long by his supporters, his opposition and the media. Trump is covered like he is the nucleus of civilization, at the center of all things where he is the cause of all events and the locus of all that happens — whether it be big or small, hot or cold.
It isn’t so.
This dynamic has imposed a terrible cost on California. Three reporters — without any sense of irony — revealed the depths of their vapidity on live television when they shared their ignorance with the same awed wonder Benjamin Franklin must have had when lightning struck his kite.
They demonstrated their shared cluelessness about the empty reservoir hiding in plain sight. It is their job to both know about, and report on it, to the public, but let’s be honest, who cares about reservoirs when there are car chases to cover and Trump, Elon, Trump, Elon, Trump, Trump, Trump?!
Before continuing, let me share the words that will start a political revolution in California, and reduce scores of political careers to ashes in the coming weeks.
In the interview with Fox 11 Los Angeles, LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, a 22-year veteran of the department that has been crippled by budget cuts and a lack of water, said the following:
My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded. It's not.
Did they fail you?' reporter Gigi Graciette asked.
'Yes,' Crowley replied.
The first to go is going to be Karen Bass, who, sources say, called the truth-telling fire chief into City Hall to be fired in an act of pettiness and revenge that seems positively Trumpian. The mayor’s office has denied this.
Apparently Mayor Bass changed her mind mid-meeting, but not before revealing how completely out of her depth she is in this moment of historic crisis where, tragically, the LA version of Mayor Roy Nagin is in charge. Municipal government is melting down like the city has burned down.
All of it is a preview of our MAGA future after we reach the consequences stage of the grand experiment that will come for the nation, as surely as it did for Los Angeles.
The United States has almost 100,000 elected governments across a vast federal union that spans a continent.
Yet mostly, the American media covers Donald Trump as if he is all-powerful and all-consuming.
He isn’t on both counts.
Just last week, before LA burned down, and many, many times before that, I made the following observation about how the national news media covers most of the country — or perhaps more precisely —doesn’t cover it. Mostly, the country is invisible.
It explains why Trump is coming back to power.
Here is the full interview with LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley:
What is your reaction to it?
Here are a few observations:
The chief was backed into a corner, and chose to tell the truth at a moment when the fork in the road offered two paths. Good for her. More importantly, she chose not to lie or shade the truth. In other words, she led. Indeed, the City of Los Angeles failed the fire department, and now much of the city has burned down.
The interview could be viewed as the foundation for a case study in municipal civics and crisis management. In fact, I’m certain it will be. The fire department is not in charge of either filling the reservoirs, or making sure that there are functioning fire hydrants. The fire department is in charge of putting out fires, while the Department of Water and Power is responsible for water and power. They all report to Mayor Karen Bass.
Why don’t the news anchors know that the Santa Ynez reservoir is empty?
Why wasn’t the empty reservoir a major story?
All of it has combined to cause a disaster of historic magnitude, and MAGA, for once, has nothing to do with it. There are no MAGA elected officials in LA, and there isn’t a single one with power in the state of California. Let me repeat: not one.
Let me introduce you to LA Fire Department deputy chief Kristine Larson, who said the following:
“You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency—whether it’s a medical call or a fire call—that looks like you. It gives that person a little bit more ease, knowing that somebody might understand their situation better.
‘Is she strong enough to do this,'” Larson asked, rhetorically answering criticism she has heard. “Or ‘You couldn’t carry my husband out of a fire.’ Which my response is, ‘He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.'”
Overwhelmingly, this is what the people of Los Angeles voted for.
When the MAGA disaster comes at least it will be the case that it was architected by a 49 per cent plurality, not an overwhelming majority. Everything in California is going to be examined with fresh eyes in the weeks ahead. A new day is coming. Out of the ashes will come renewal and reform.
What is it exactly that Governor Newsom has been doing for much of the last year?
He spent an immense amount of time on presidential politics, where he played a leading role in defending President Biden.
He had time to run a shadow campaign for president in case he really wasn’t, while taking a back seat to no one when it came to the great gaslighting and shouting down of 2024.
He didn’t quite tell his constituents “f*ck you” like Joe Scarborough did his audience, but it was close.
A few weeks ago, there was a long CNN story speculating on what Kamala Harris might do next.
The gist was that maybe she would run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, or perhaps run for governor of California in 2026.
The story didn’t offer any hints about why she would want those jobs, but nevertheless the tone of the story made clear that she had to have one of them. With regards to the governor job, it said this:
The governor’s race, meanwhile, looks like a lay-up: Harris was elected statewide three times and served 10 years combined as state attorney general and US senator, and when asked by CNN, several major candidates made clear either directly or through aides that they would likely step aside if she got in.
In CNN’s conversation with over a dozen current and former Harris advisers and other top California Democratic players, the only consensus around the vice president is that she likely can’t do both, since that would essentially require launching a presidential campaign soon after being sworn in as governor.
Getting into the governor’s race, top Harris advisers believe, would require making her intentions clear at the latest by the summer of 2025. That means Harris will need to decide very soon after Trump’s inauguration if she will quickly give up on her dream of being president – which she feels got short shrift from the circumstances of this year – and instead go for a job that, while one of the most powerful in American politics, would clearly be a fallback.
Harris would have to think of running for governor as “more of a capstone than a stepping stone,” said one person who has advised her in the past. “If you’re thinking of running for president in 2028, the worst thing you can do is run for governor in 2026.”
Another person close to Harris told CNN that the gamble of skipping the governor’s race is worth the potential payoff.
“Running for governor would be a step down, and it would interfere with her ability to run for president again,” the person said. “I don’t know if she’s going to run for president again, but a shot at running for president again is worth giving up running for governor.”
Of course, Kamala Harris wasn’t on the proverbial bridge.
Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass were.
During the “crowded hours” Bass was junketing in Ghana, and Newsom was pretending to talk to Biden while evading a distraught woman who lost everything and wanted to know what he was going to do to about the fact that her daughter’s school had burned down.
There is a question at hand for a great many elected officials in California that is similar to those that confronted Bush administration officials after September 11th. The magnitude of the intelligence failure and lack of imagination about the vulnerabilities in the air travel system changed the whole of 21st century America. It also contributed to bringing us this low moment when, 10 days hence, Trump will become president again. This time, it will be with a magic wand that he calls immunity.
As Churchill, said, in a democracy, the people get the government that they deserve.
When they get sick of getting what they deserve, there is always the possibility of something better happening. It’s how progress is made in America. We build on rubble and ruin in America.
The burning of Los Angeles will be studied for the rest of my lifetime. The appearance of the city will be as profoundly altered as Lower Manhattan was in the aftermath of 9/11.
A collection of mediocrities, careerist hacks, political cronies and a vapid news media have offered the whole nation a preview of what happens when imbeciles take charge in sufficient numbers.
It is a warning for the nation from the state where all trends start.
The MAGA nutters, criminals, weirdos, deviants, cranks, conspiracy theorists, and accused rapists who are descending on Washington will have infinitely more power than their mirror images in Los Angeles and California, who dominate the Democratic Party.
The difference between the political hacks in Los Angeles and MAGA is that, in the end, MAGA can make the whole world burn like the California incompetents have let happen in Los Angeles.
Don’t underestimate them.
There are nine days left until Trump raises his hand and takes the oath that he has already desecrated once.
What has happened in Los Angeles is beyond comprehension — and yet it isn’t.
What has happened was predictable. The people who ran for office in the state were supposed to be ready and make sure that everything was ready.
Nothing was.
Whose fault is that again in the American system?
Government of, by and for the people means that the people are in charge.
Maybe the people should look more closely at the people who are running to handle life and death responsibilities.
Next time, I suspect they will.
Until then, the fires will burn because, at the moment when water could have doused the flames, there was none.
Incredibly, that isn’t the most incredible part of the story.
That would be the fact that no one is responsible or at fault for the response.
Et tu, Steve? Need someone to blame for a natural disaster? How about sustained 70+ mile per hour winds? How about no rain for months? Ever try to douse a backyard bbq in the wind? Multiply that a million-fold and you’ve got just one of the LA fires. There are many things that could have been done to prevent or, at least, minimize the damage. But the most obvious one was ignored, because millions want to live in an area that was once a desert and is prone to landslides and earthquakes. Enough with the finger pointing. At least wait until the fires are out and the danger subsides.
Uh, maybe suburban sprawl is an issue. L.A. County is mostly desert. See Polanski’s “Chinatown.” I agree municipal politics is where it happens—but when was the last rain in L.A.? May? Big Ag takes a lot of water to grow pistachios, pomegranates, almonds, etc., in the San Joaquin Valley and they bitch about not getting water. This is far more complex an issue that will not be solved by finger-wagging. Hold accountable, yes. But have you driven I-5 out of the Grapevine, more and more subdivisions after a mountain top has been flattened. Freeways constantly widened. Insane build out. But then again what municipal departments are in charge of 100 mph winds, Santa Ana’s on steroids. Take a breath, Steve, read something by the late Mike Davis, “City of Quartz” or “Ecology of Fear.” But then he was a leftie. Prefer literature? T.C. Boyle’s “Tortilla Curtain,” which mixes immigration, encroachment on wildlife’s habitat, and wildfires. It was going to happen. Yes, I hope people are held accountable, especially the People and their complacency.