
What Would Nellis Say?
California's Burning

California's burning
By Rick Stiller
The typical MAGA Republican response to the massive wildfires in Los Angeles was not “How can we help” the ravaged city and the tens of thousands of residents who lost everything, but rather, “Who can we blame?”…preferably a Democratic woman of color, like Mayor Karen Bass.
It should be noted that the first water distribution system in the city was established in 1860 and continuously expanded as the population grew exponentially, but at no point in that construction could any engineer or politician anticipate massive fires raging through enormous swathes of the second-largest city in the nation.
The system was not designed to open many fire hydrants simultaneously. No city in the country has the resources or infrastructure to fight fires raging through forty-thousand drought-stricken acres driven by hundred-mile-an-hour winds.
To blame the recently elected mayor, who increased the fire department's budget, or the state's governor is absurd but a typical response from Trump’s gang of right-wing nationalist leaders who have no empathy for the tens of thousands of devastated victims, nor do they possess any experience, qualifications, or understanding of the enormous responsibility of running a metropolis that is home to millions.
What it does prove is that the MAGA Party does not care about truth, facts, common sense, protecting the citizens of our country from disaster, or lending a hand when one occurs. Their priority is gaining and wielding power against anyone who stands in their path to ultimate domination of our political system, institutionalized white supremacy, and ensuring enormous tax cuts and massive profits for their wealthy donors.
While the Biden administration rushed aid to California, Speaker of the House Mikey Johnson’s tactless response to the emergency was, “It appears to us that state and local leaders were derelict in their duty in many respects, so that’s something that has to be factored in. I think there should probably be conditions on that aid.”
Trump refused to send aid to battle wildfires in the state during his first term because California “voted against him” in the 2016 election. Aides had to produce maps featuring numerous districts that voted Republican before he would release the funds.
His incoherent solution was having workers rake up leaves and remove fallen trees on the forest floors…hundreds of thousands of acres of forest floors. He did not suggest who would do the work or how they would be paid. (Perhaps those millions of undocumented migrants can be put to work as slaves before he throws them out of the country?)
During his recent visit to inspect the devastation, Trump, displaying his ignorance, berated California officials for not pumping water from the Colorado River hundreds of miles to the north to fight the fires in Los Angeles. Claiming voter fraud where there has been no evidence to support his claim, he threatened to cut off all federal funding for land and water management and natural disasters if California did not change its voter ID laws (which are as robust as most states) to limit minority voting.
We should not forget his reaction to category-4 Hurricane Maria that devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, destroying the power grid and access to drinking water across the entire island. Trump’s response was to toss rolls of paper towels to frantic residents and withhold Federal assistance through the rest of his term. "I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack because we've spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico, and that's fine. We saved a lot of lives." To which San Juan Mayor Cruz replied, "You are incapable of empathy and frankly simply cannot get the job done."
Then there’s his hopeless response to the Covid crisis, which left more than a million dead and our economy in a dumpster fire. We should expect similar delusions, incoherence, and ineptitude in his second term, but he and his surrogates got a head start by flooding the media with lies and misinformation, which always leads back to finding someone in the opposition to blame rather than rallying the country to produce support and solutions.
The tragedy in California is Trump’s first significant opportunity to exhibit his inability to empathize, let alone motivate the federal government to help end the crisis and begin rebuilding the lives of thousands of residents who lost their homes, possessions, and jobs just because some of them did not vote for him in the most recent election.
These callous and inept responses to past national crises are merely a preview of the cruelty, chaos, and incompetence we should expect from our first fascist dictator and his legion of MAGA bootlickers for the next four years. Pray that real American patriots will be brave enough to stand with their neighbors to fight the political bonfires that will decimate our democracy and divide our society in the months ahead.
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