The Fire and the Plague

The silver lining to a dark tragedy

California inside of a Petri dish. Burning.

In 1666, a great fire swept through London, destroying thousands of homes and claiming an untold number of lives. It would become known as The Great Fire of London (pretty apt).

As a symbol, fire has various differing literary meanings. It can certainly be a curse but also a cleansing agent—arriving during times of chaos or stagnation to ‘burn it all down’ and start from the ground up; the proverbial reset button. Such was the case with The Great Fire. Immediately prior to the fire, London had been decimated by an outbreak of the bubonic plague. The plague was largely caused by the squalid conditions endured by working class Londoners at the time—characterized by terrible sanitation, open sewage, and overcrowding. As depicted in Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, The Great Fire was a symbolic end to the plague outbreak and the beginning of a new era. The devastation from the fire allowed London to be rebuilt with wider streets, a better sewage system, and various new safety precautions, such as creation of the city’s first Fire Brigade. So, while an unmistakable tragedy, The Great Fire was also a catalyst for practical progress and improvement of the conditions which first made the plague so virulent, and then allowed the fire to do the damage it did.

I think you know where we’re going with this…

The LA Fires

Amidst the dizzying barrage of narratives and counter-narratives surrounding the LA Fires, the true non-partisan might feel unsure about how to view this calamity. Was it simply an unavoidable, blameless tragedy? A condemnation of California’s poor forest management, and nothing more? Or, like The Great Fire, are the LA Fires a symptom of a deeper problem, necessitating a full-scale reset of the governing philosophy and management of the entire state? There actually is a correct answer, and it can be found buried deep in the ash of the city of Los Angeles.

You see, even before the fires, Los Angeles wasn’t doing so hot. In fact, it was a pit. The homelessness crisis has been plainly visible to anyone with the misfortune to set foot in LA in the past 5 years but, despite billions of dollars being thrown at the issue, the city’s homeless population is expected to increase dramatically by 2028. Crime is also a major issue in LA—the early months of 2024 saw a crime surge of more than 65%, while property crime and car theft are also on the rise.

The sad thing is that LA’s plight is far from unique in California, with San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and even San Diego in similarly dire straits. So, given the universality of California’s malaise, any individual discussions about forest management, budget cuts, DEI expenditures, etc., are missing the point slightly. While all are valid conversations, they’re also just symptoms of a larger problem—just as the LA Fires are a symptom. The superseding cause is that California is a petri dish for an ideology that has become a caricature of itself.

‘Telephone’: Repetition inside an Echo Chamber

For those who’ve never experienced the joy of the children’s game ‘Telephone’ (AKA ‘Chinese Whispers’), the players form a line—the first player in line comes up with a phrase or message and whispers it to the second player. The second player repeats the message to the third, and so on. The last player announces the message to the group, which has inevitably become unrecognizable from the original phrase, and joyous laughter ensues. The same thing has happened with California’s political philosophy. Except I can’t hear anyone laughing.

You see, each of the policies that gave rise to the LA Fires can be traced back to something that actually made sense, once upon a time. Post-civil rights era discussions about integration and actual, visible discrimination have been replaced by ‘DEI’—a philosophy which prefers an under-equipped but racially-diverse fire department to one that’s functionally prepared but happens to be all-Caucasian. Real debates about the rehabilitation of prisoners and the sentencing of juveniles have given way to ‘Woke’ California cities that refuse to prosecute (much less imprison) violent criminals. The party of conservationism and environmentalism is so good at conserving water that it just let an entire city burn down, spewing billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere in the process. The trend is obvious—what began in the 20^th Century as interesting and important moral/philosophical discussions have devolved into rote, performative, ineffective nonsense.

This has come to light most obviously in California because of its strong echo chamber—a product of total left-wing control of the sociopolitical environment. This echo chamber is protected from disturbance by things like Cancel Culture, allowing increasingly far-left ‘solutions’ to reverberate endlessly without pushback or criticism. These reverberating ideas are then gradually and incrementally reinforced, expanded, and doubled down upon, resulting in a twisted game of Telephone where the end result is… ridiculous.

The Santa Ana Winds of Change

To leave off on a more positive note, remember the words of Jack Black’s character in The Holiday (ignore the fact that Black himself is likely a deranged Hollywood weirdo): “When the Santa Anas blow all bets are off. Anything can happen.”

Indeed.

The Santa Ana winds that started these fires may have brought devastation, chaos, and misery to the people of LA, but they can also be the ‘Winds of Change’—heralding a commonsense revolution in Los Angeles and a departure from its long-held performative standard of governance. Maybe this means a shift away from Newsom-ism and toward conservatism. Or maybe it just means California politicians will stop playing along with the far-left wing of their party and begin criticizing and abandoning shallow ‘Wokeism’, in favor of efficiency and practical policy. Perhaps the LA Fire Department’s next Deputy Chief will be a serious person, rather than the victim-blaming DEI hire we currently have. Perhaps the next LA Mayor will be physically present when the next full-scale disaster hits, rather than flitting off to Ghana for no discernable reason despite previously vowing never to travel abroad during her term. Thanks to California’s impenetrable echo chamber and the tribalistic loyalty that preserves it, these types of political failures have gone largely unchecked for years. Perhaps now, we can begin to take notice.

A month ago, all this would have seemed like fanciful, wishful thinking. But, as The Great Fire of London did nearly 400 hundred years ago, the LA Fires have given us a real opportunity to start anew.