And Who By Fire?

California burning on smoky winter days

As of the date of this post, 16 Los Angeles residents are dead and over 12,000 structures have been destroyed or damaged. While the Santa Ana winds have lessened and firefighters have contained some of the blazes, it’s unclear when the over 100,000 Angelenos currently under evacuation orders will be able to return to their homes.

Twenty years ago, this would have been a tragedy. But as with the UHC CEO shooting, the LA wildfires have been greeted not with horror but with joy. Many of the pedophiles, perverts and devil-worshippers of Hollywood’s A-list are now homeless. Once the smoke clears we’re likely to find a few charred celebrity corpses. And throughout Flyover Country there will be much rejoicing at their fiery demise.

We remain people trapped in our information bubbles, wishing the worst on the evildoers and taking joy in their suffering. In Purgatory fire purifies. In Hell it just illuminates endless monstrosity. Those who celebrate this firestorm as divine retribution may want to think about the light it shines on them, and on us all.

If we don’t heal the divisions that have grown between us, we’re going to see more deaths and more unseemly cheering. We’ll keep seeing demons everywhere but in our mirror. To work toward that end, let’s start our explorations with a guy who doesn’t get a lot of love among most of my reader base.

Steve Schmidt is cofounder of the now-shuttered Lincoln Project and a Never Trumper Republican turned registered Democrat. If this were the 1970s, Schmidt would be a Rockefeller Republican: fiscally conservative and socially moderate to liberal. (For what it’s worth, many have also labeled Donald Trump as a Rockefeller Republican). And he’s not wrong when he notes:

It has become fashionable in recent years to bash California. The state’s governance has become a punchline, a caricature and a MAGA war cry. Among the great grotesqueries and stupidities of our time is the sheer number of MAGA politicians who openly disdain the nation’s economic, technological, social, cultural, and innovation furnace.

Steve Schmidt, “The lessons of the Titanic are enduring”

For their part, Schmidt’s commenters knew exactly who to blame for this mess:

In a later Substack, Schmidt spent less time talking about MAGA and more time talking about the failings of California’s state and local government. That piece opens with:

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?!

Steve Schmidt, “What has happened in LA is beyond comprehension -- and yet it isn't”

While Schmidt’s commenters were happy to hiss at his mentions of MAGA, they gave this piece a much frostier response.

Former Eurabiamania guest Librarian of Celaeno has written an excellent piece about Sludgestack. As he describes the phenomenon:

Sludge makes you sleepy, content, and placid, if a bit disoriented. It’s designed to halt critical faculties and confirm you in your preferred state of believing the world is working like you think it ought. This isn’t to say that it makes you think things are going well necessarily, just that they’re going as expected. Sludge is compatible with unwanted political outcomes or chronic discontent. The key desired result is unfocused docility. You can be a bit mad so long as what you’re mad about is what you expect to be mad about and you come to the conclusion that nothing can be done.

Librarian of Celaeno, “Sludgestack”

So long as Steve Schmidt was feeding his audience stories about the Awful Awfulness of Donald Trump, they were content. They could call the President-elect rude names; they could blame him for their woes; they could lament the stupidity of those horrible MAGAts who supported the tyrant. His Sludge was better-written than the efforts of JoJo from Jerz or Jeff Tiedrich. But it served the same pacifying purpose.

When Schmidt went off the plantation and called out California’s dysfunctional government, he immediately got pushback. Blaming Donald Trump and MAGA is satisfying. His audience would never think of voting for Trump, so they can blame their troubles on the MAGAts, Christofascists, and Techbro Billionaires. While he did some finger-waggling at California’s governing mediocrities in his first piece, most of his venom was aimed at the Orange Man.

Pointing a finger at Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom, by contrast, doesn’t provide that satisfying warm glow of self-righteousness. Very few if any of Schmidt’s readers voted for Trump. But it’s a safe bet that almost every one of his California subscribers enthusiastically supported Bass and Newsom. And Californians have long believed that they live in the Greatest and Most Enlightened Place Ever. They might complain about taxes and bitch about bureaucracy, but those are a small price to pay for living in American Paradise.

Those beliefs have been seriously challenged of late. The explosive growth of California’s homeless population has seriously diminished the quality of life for many longtime California residents. California’s high taxes, astronomical real estate prices, and stifling bureaucracy have tarnished the Golden State’s reputation. For years California has seen a net outflow of residents.

But while some have chosen exile, others have doubled down on their magical thinking. 5th Century Romans convinced themselves that the Empire was immortal and those marauding barbarian problems would soon fade away. Many Californians would rather step over shit and needles than acknowledge the crisis. They would rather blame crumbling infrastructure and bureaucratic gridlock on Trump than accept their state’s political and cultural shortcomings. And they would rather shoot the messenger than accept an unpalatable message.

So what’s wrong with California?

Subscriber and regular reader and listener Dave wins a lifetime Notes from the End of Time comp for introducing me to this National Review piece. As Ryan Mills notes:

“Historically, that land would either be deliberately burned off by the indigenous tribes or it would be grazed or it would be sparked by lightning strikes,” said [Edward] Ring, an advocate of continuing to manage the chaparral land’s oaks and scrub brush with grazing animals, mechanical thinning, and controlled burns.

But that hasn’t happened, he said, due to public policies, bureaucratic resistance, and pushback from environmental activists. The result: The L.A. foothills were primed to burn.

Ryan Mills, “California’s ‘Impenetrable’ Environmental Bureaucracy Left L.A. Hills Primed to Burn”

The chapparal landscape that characterizes much of southern California relies on occasional fires to keep the brush thinned and to clear dead vegetation so new sprouts can rise out of the ashes. But these brush fires also kill live animals and plants. More troubling, they subject nearby residents to the smell of smoke. As a result, many Californians fight tooth and nail against controlled burns in their neighborhood.

Controlled burns won’t stop fires entirely. But a burned-over area contains less flammable detritus, which slows their spread and gives fire departments time to bring blazes under control. Without controlled burns, the uncontrolled burns grow faster and are more likely to spread into residential areas.

There are other fire hazards to consider. According to the Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative, there are 45,252 homeless people in the city and 75,312 in the county. But when Governor Gavin Newsom ordered LA to clear out its homeless encampments, the City and County governments both refused to comply.

Many of LA’s homeless suffer from mental illness or addiction. Some use fires to stay warm, while others smoke tobacco or other substances. Still others tap into city power lines to bring electricity to their tents. In 2023 there were 13,909 homeless fires in Los Angeles. Police believe that the Kenneth Fire, which burned over 1,000 acres, was deliberately set.

To speak frankly of these issues marks one out as a culturally insensitive poor-shamer punching down against the homeless unhoused. Therefore proper Angelenos, like other prosperous Blue State urbanites, magnanimously allow them to sleep outdoors, eat garbage, and kill themselves with fentanyl, meth, and synthetic marijuana. This does nothing to improve the quality of life for Californians housed and unhoused.

But, as Josh Slocum notes, one gains social credit in certain circles through:

[t]he ostentatious public performance of not being bothered by pathology, wickedness, and abuse enacted by currently fetishized ‘victim’ groups. To keep his membership in the tribe, the leftist must act out ‘acceptance’ of behaviors that are self-injurious, abusive to others, exploitative, and uncivilized. He is praised as a ‘good man’ to the extent that he successfully displays this moral preening.

Josh Slocum, “An Addendum to Goblins”

So what happens after the smoke clears?

To keep themselves distracted Californians, like many Americans nowadays, turn away from local details in favor of the big picture. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump is a favored bugbear. This also gives them a chance to wax rhapsodic about the dangers of Climate Change and Global Warming. This Sludge helps them deal with their fears without actually expending any effort or taking any risk.

But Sludge is a luxury beverage. You can only distract yourself so long as distraction is a live option. When you can no longer avoid the facts on the ground, Sludge no longer pacifies. After a brief period of withdrawal — which we’ve already seen in the desperate defenses of Biden, Harris, and Newsom — the recovering Sludge addict will be forced to deal with a much more complicated and decidedly less comforting reality.

California’s hard left turn is actually of recent vintage. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan both came from California. While California has voted (D) in every presidential election since 1992, they also elected Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor from 2003 to 2011. And there were already signs that California’s blue edifice was crumbling. Even before the fires Los Angeles voters booted George Gascon out of the DA’s office for his soft-on-crime policies.

I don’t expect California to suddenly become MAGA Country. I’m not even certain that these fires will be enough to make California a two-party state again. Those who lost homes in Malibu or Pacific Palisades still have the spare capital to chase shadows and play at make-believe. Many whose houses burned in more downscale neighborhoods will take whatever insurance payouts they get and leave California.

That being said, this is an excellent time for California’s Republican Party to make a move back toward relevance. On a national scale the Woke Left has become unfashionable — and there’s nothing Californians hate more than being out of step with the Current Thing. As we move away from the excesses of the 2010s and early 2020s in search of new excesses, the American zeitgeist is likely to move Right.

When this happened in 1980, Ronald Reagan rode the wave into the White House. The less exciting and less populist George H.W. Bush was unable to sustain that momentum after Reagan’s second term. But Post-Cold War America still found itself under globalist rulership for the Clinton, Dubya, and Obama administrations.

Trump, like Reagan, came to office as a reactionary. His voters rejected the global markets that had left them poorer while the fat cats who held them in contempt grew richer and richer. From 2020 to 2024 we were ruled by bureaucrats who used a befuddled old man as their figurehead. And in 2024 American voters reacted again.

You can rail against the Orange Menace who now holds the Oval Office. You can dress up in Handmaid robes and pink pussy hats, repost Occupy Democrats memes, and bask in the warm glow of standing up against tyranny. There are still lots of Boomers reliving their campus protest days in Sludgestack comment sections. But they’re soon going to find themselves as irrelevant as 1980s hippies.