The horror that has hit Los Angeles is
something we haven’t seen since Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over that
lantern in 1871. Back then, Chicago burned to the ground and roughly 300
people died. That was more than 150 years ago, things were different
then, and things are very different now. There is literally zero reason
for a repeat, in any respect, of what happened in Chicago, and yet we
are getting just that because of the mentality of the radical
progressive leftists who’ve run that city for all but 8 of the last 64
years.
The Great Chicago Fire makes sense in a weird way. Wood and
brick were the building materials of choice back then, and wood burns
like mad. There were no zoning laws to speak of; buildings were
clustered together because “traffic” was a bunch of horses stopping for
water or a poop. Go to any old town’s “historic district,” and you’ll
see what I mean – it is not rare to find “roads” or alleys where you or a
friend can touch buildings on both sides of the street.
When
fire hit one house, it risked wiping out the block or the section of
town for those very reasons. Add in the infancy and luddite nature of
the fire fighting profession and technology and it was a recipe for
disaster. Almost every major city around back then has some (much
smaller) version of the Great Chicago Fire.
But we
aren’t living 150 years ago. Los Angeles is not a densely clustered town
of swinging-door saloons and rickety wooden buildings; it is heavily
regulated (just try to build something there or put a pool in your own
backyard, and you’ll find out how heavy-handed a government can be), and
sprawling metropolis with millions upon millions of people. There is
more money in the greater Los Angeles area than most countries in Africa
and South America.
“Modern” is an understatement to describe LA, or at least describe how it was…how it appeared to be.
It
turns out that modern Los Angeles was like so much of the entertainment
industry upon which it is built: beautiful and new on the surface but
rotting at its core.
All the modern architecture and “smart homes” wired for the
digital age were wiped out by a lack of water – something the ancient
Romans mastered with a mortarless aqueduct system 2000 years ago.
California
doesn’t lack for water; it lacks the will to move it to where it’s
needed. Los Angeles is basically a desert. Irrigation greened it and
Hollywood grew it. At a certain point, the progressive left decided to
destroy it.
OK, they didn’t decide to destroy it, the natural result of their policies just do that.
Rather
than put in place whatever is necessary to safeguard the lives and
property of its citizens, the Democrats in California were busy
congratulating themselves for the configuration of the people they hired
to administer the city.
No one’s skin color, gender or
sexuality has ever put out a fire. Yet, you would be hard-pressed to
find a story about LA’s Fire Chief prior to the current disaster that
was about anything else. She seems to have an impressive resume,
but given the way no one talked about it when she got the job, it
should be asked if it was the most impressive resume or just impressive
enough for a gay woman to satisfy the DEI Gods.
Janisse
Quiñones, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Engineer of the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power, has overseen the failure of the
water supply and her incompetent leadership may well be the most
responsible aspect of this disaster. She is paid three-quarters of a
million dollars per year to…check DEI boxes. The ones she doesn’t
personally check are what she sees as her priority in that job. “It's
important to me that everything we do is with an equity lens and social
justice and making sure that we right the wrongs that we've done in the
past,” Quiñones said before her incompetence helped destroy the city.
Mayor Karen Bass was the first black woman to be mayor of
Los Angeles. That and $7 will buy you a cup of coffee. But until her
inability to do the job cost lives and tens of billions in damages, she
was celebrated for existing. That’s what Democrats do – they elevate and
celebrate people who exist while ignoring what they do or what they
can’t do.
It’s really easy to be “historic” and
congratulate yourself for the unimportance when there is nothing
actually important needing to be done. But there is always feces flying
toward a fan somewhere, and when they meet you damn well better have
someone who knows what they’re doing at the helm, no matter what their
configuration happens to be.
The best person for any job
may well be a woman, a minority, someone who is gay or whatever, but if
your priority is to look like a Benetton ad from the 90s rather than
hire the most qualified person for a job, don’t be surprised when things
don’t work out the way they should. And it’s much more than a
coincidence that none of these “leaders” is remotely conservative, as
any conservative would have refused to participate in press coverage
about their irrelevant characteristics. Condi Rice doesn’t bill herself
as the first black female Secretary of State; liberals do (through
clenched teeth, if they acknowledge her at all).
There
is no serious argument that Los Angeles has the best, most qualified
people in the positions necessary to have prevented this disaster or to
have gotten it under control quickly once it started. But they all could
serve as grand marshals of various progressive interest group parades.
That gets them celebrated, with glowing press coverage…and puts out
exactly zero fires.
