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.
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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.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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