By Philip Yeung
The LA fires are a primal scream from planet Earth. It feels like the end of the world. It's hard to know where a natural disaster begins, and a horrible human catastrophe ends.
A tale of two countries
The costliest disaster in US history, these fires have incinerated $200 billion worth of property, laying bare the incompetence of the American leadership. People are quick to compare the US to China in rescue and recovery efforts in natural disasters. China's response is united, massive and lightning-fast, with volunteers, soldiers, and donations flooding into the disaster zones. No country is better prepared to handle large-scale emergencies than China. In America, the utterly tongue-tied Karen Bass says it all. The LA mayor could not utter a single word in an unwatchable press interview. This arrogant woman had fired LA's fire chief for daring to criticize her for slashing the city's firefighting budget.
Over 150,000 signatures are demanding that she resign. The governor, meanwhile, was reduced to making frantic calls to the president, who, incredibly, refused to take his call five times. Biden is too far gone to care. Unbelievably, he used a hurtful pun, telling his Vice President to "fire away", for her take on the disaster. When people were dying, and houses were burning in the inferno, Biden was gleefully telling the world that "I have become a great grandfather" and that the newborn weighed four and a half pounds. This left fidgety Governor Newsom with an awkward smile. Biden has clearly overstayed his welcome. With zero sense of priorities, he doesn't show an ounce of compassion for the fire victims. As he exits the presidency, his approval ratings have hit rock bottom.
America the ugly
There is no water to fight the fire, but plenty of arsonists to start the fire, and hordes of looters to steal from the burning properties, all unthinkable crimes in China. The inferno was rumored to have been started by arsonists, the homeless, or terrorists. It is a perfect storm, as LA's firefighting services are left dangerously underfunded. This is the picture of a country in chaos.
People blame the ferocity of the fires on extreme weather, on wokeness gone wild, and on the private control of water resources. In America, wealthy homeowners are hiring private firefighters to protect their property. On the political front, Trump is busy mocking the democratic governor, calling Newsom, "Newscum", flaunting his trademark talent in lobbing insulting nicknames at his adversaries. Ironically, the California governor is one of few leaders who orient against the fossil fuel industry, calling it the "polluting heart of the climate crisis". But he was caught flat-footed by the scale of the firestorm.
Don't expect things to improve under Trump. During his first term, he habitually used federal emergency funds to settle political vendettas against democratic governors. Anti-science Trump has promised to pivot away from Biden's carbon-reducing policies. Expect natural disasters to intensify and multiply. Now with godlike power, Trump will only get spicier in the second term. A Republican senator from Wyoming has lost no time playing politics with a natural disaster, warning that there will be "strings attached" to any federal aid to the victims. No humiliation, no help.
A dystopian future for America?
In a country run by lawyers, multiple lawsuits have been filed over the ignition point and the spread of the fires. Some blame power lines for triggering the conflagration. Many pin it on arson. It is recorded that over 4000 wildfires in southern California were started by arsonists and homeless cooking in 2023 alone. Meanwhile, politicians are milking political advantage from the blaze. For insurance companies, fire is money. Uncannily, they bailed out just before disaster struck. With this sick American system, how do you make it great again? Some choose to make a sick joke out of the LA fires, chanting: "Make America hot again". Faith in government drops to an all-time low, with politics dividing the country, greedy capitalism sucking it dry and climate-induced dystopia looming larger. I can't blame Americans for feeling fearful about their future.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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