Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. – H. L. Mencken
A bold prediction you think? In the wake of so much destruction in California to which the policies of the Far Left wing of Democrat policies have contributed, surely the voters of that benighted state will turn on their rulers this time, following Palisades fire disaster, which 5th generation Californian and war historian Victor David Hanson, describes as Dresden in California:
The Los Angeles apocalypse was a multisystem, green-woke collapse—and a disastrous reminder that when Soviet-style, anti-meritocratic ideology permeates all aspects of modern life in California, disaster is inevitable.
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Add it all up, and the woke socialist state has been eagerly deindustrializing, decivilizing, and retribalizing its way into what is now a veritable peacetime Dresden on the Pacific.
Again, there is no one else to blame, because California is one of those rare states in which Republicans have de facto zero political power. All the state media, the legacy newspapers, the Silicon Valley daily online news sites, the Bay Area-based Apple, Google, and Facebook monopolies, and the local news outlets are parrots of the woke-green mindset.
To the degree that anything still works in California, it predates 2000.
Moreoever, as this City Journal explains, ordinary citizens have now become their own journalists via social-media (especially via Twitter 2.0, “X”), bypassing the legacy MSM. As a result, having a Democrat-friendly legacy media suppressing the facts and truths because they hurt the ruling class is increasingly not working:
In past emergencies, if you couldn’t find out something in the newspapers or on TV, you had to seek it out yourself; today, news and images spread across the globe in an instant, thanks to citizens documenting disasters in real time.
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Los Angeles feels like ancient Rome set ablaze. The city’s leaders are either conspicuously absent or trying to look important on camera as the city burns. Leading Democratic officials quickly blamed the catastrophe on “climate change,” but thanks to social media, residents are learning daily of the acts of gross negligence that contributed to the devastation.
Well they had the chance to do that four years ago with Governor Hairgel, with fire disasters being the key driver then, refused to recall him, even in the face of him demonstrating how disconnected he is from the voters (Flyover State):
This guy was born and raised in the state and has never even driven between San Francisco and Los Angeles? That’s flyover country to him. No wonder the I-5 and CA-99 are in such shocking states of disrepair; the local pols don’t drive them, don’t know and don’t care.
Admittedly I pointed out in the article, Recall Newsom, that those problems long-predated him. In early 2021 I documented the policy failures on poverty, water and fire in a California Screaming series. 1
But that also meant that he knew, better than his predecessors, that the polices were failing, and yet had done nothing except mouth words about better forest management, while cutting CalFire’s wildfire prevention budget by $150 million in 2020, and building not a single new reservoir even after voters approved of a $7.2 billion bond measure in 2014 to pay for them (he also demolished four hydro-electric dams). The even more terrible thing than him not being held responsible is that it wouldn’t have made any difference:
Even if Newsom is recalled and replaced by a Republican, the failed Democrat policies will remain in place because the Democrats have overwhelming control of the State House and Senate. For almost twenty years now they’ve been able to pass whatever laws they wanted and override the Governor’s veto. It’s why Arrrnuullld (RHINO) was turned into a pussy so quickly when he became Governor after Gray Davis’s recall – although judging from comments in recent years, there was not much difference between him and the Democrats anyway.
As Hanson pointed out:
The California left holds supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature. Only 17 percent of California’s huge congressional delegation of 52 seats is Republican. California’s judiciary is the most left-wing in the country. There is not a single Republican on the 15-member Los Angeles City Council.
In such a system failure is actually rewarded. Just a couple of months after Newsom survived his recall, his State Financial Controller, Betty Yee, had to admit that she could not detail where $320 billion spending had gone, while his Labor Secretary Julie Su, admitted that she couldn’t account for 10% of the $114 billion the state had paid in unemployment claims during the C-19 scare. Two years later Su would become the Acting Secretary of Labor in the Biden administration.
The lack of fire insurance currently being screamed about – all those nasty insurers cancelling the policies – was also apparent two years ago via other avenues:
State Farm, Farmers, Safeco, AmGUARD, Liberty Mutual, and Falls Lake are not writing new homeowners policies or leaving the state. Allstate has stopped writing homeowners’ insurance policies as well. It’s not just the fires causing havoc in the insurance industry, of course. The lawlessness allowed by state and local Democrats has driven Safeco to drop 950 policies in the Bay Area. Safeco’s parent company Liberty Mutual says it will stop offering business-owner policies in the fall.
In the case of fire insurance those companies hired their own scientists to look at the forestry, water and other issues, ran the risk factors across their actuaries (because that’s what they’re expert in), concluded that the risk of catastrophic fires was increasing rapidly, and thus wanted to bump their premiums. The California regulators refused so the companies stopped offering fire insurance and/or quit the state.
So what has just happened in Los Angeles was entirely predictable, and was predicted – but not by anybody who got elected.
In the face of such long-term obtuseness by the voters, I find it hard to believe they’ll vote for Republicans now, even in the face of such a disaster. They may well vote for different Democrats – I have to think the Castro-worshipping mayor, Karen Bass, will be given the boot:
Yesterday, a leaked LA government memo revealed that Bass had intended to cut an additional $49 million, on top of the $17.5 million already cut, from the fire budget.
But what will that matter if the policies don’t change?
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- See Also: ↩︎
California Screaming – Filth, Drugs and Poverty
California has become a cruel and unusual state because callousness and narcissism were redefined as caring and compassion.
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Gavin Newsom spent $24 billion of taxpayer money to increase homelessness by 40% since he took office
Oh yeah, the mentally ill homeless….
California Screaming – Water
The 10 largest reservoirs in California were built between 1927 and 1979. The New Melones Dam was the last of these, work already advanced enough that they couldn’t kill it. It was completed in 1979. Since then, 15 million more people have been added to the state’s population.
California Screaming – Fire
You would think that, given the natural dryness of California and the massive forests in the state, its leaders would not have been so stupid as to ignore the science. But even worse than the national logging policy, California’s Green sentiment also prevented controlled burns (for fear of disrupting animal habitats) and barred even minor brush-clearing programs. As a result its forests are now twice as dense as they were 150 years ago — when the population was a fraction of today’s. Behind that unnatural density: state and federal rules that make it nearly impossible (and insanely expensive) to lay a finger on any of this precious overgrowth.
No Minister 
“Florida here we come” say Californians.