People of Southern California like myself have been on the receiving close of texts and calls from friends and family for more than a year then that confirmed we were safe from the flames ravaging Los Angeles County.  ,
A friend who lives in Alabama texted me one of these things. When I explained to him that we were safe and west of the fires, he inquired how such massive tragedies may occur in a position like Los Angeles. Able to resist the opening, I told him the government in California frequently, and in Los Angeles County particularly, had become sluggish, useless, and bloated and was no longer worthy or interested in serving its citizens. In the end, anyone who has been paying attention won’t find the fires and the president’s inability to respond to them dreadful and terrible. California had been stumbling toward some sort of catastrophe for some time.
My friend clearly responded with Hemingway’s popular line: It happens slowly, then immediately.
There will be occasion much to allocate blame and accountability for what happened in Malibu, the Palisades, Woodland Hills, Altadena, and Pasadena. However, some truths about the one-party, democratic system of government that dominates California and Los Angeles have already been revealed.
Second, ideology is not command, and management is not exchangeable. Mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass immediately demonstrated her incapacity to deal with the disaster that was taking place on her watch. California, a state controlled by the Democratic Party and where no Republican candidate is elected nationwide, elects its political leaders based on intellectual conformity and eternal traits. The end result is that far-left “firsts” who support the democratic objective fill government positions. In one-party California, it is more important that a person with the desired characteristics and ideology has a position of power than their actual capacity to do it.
California also picks its leaders based on DEI, which is always sluggish under stress. From what Henry Kissinger properly observed, the intellectual capital that leaders will need to accumulate before ascending to the top will be able to rely on them. Democrats in California’s one-party program do not appoint philosophical money because they don’t want to.
Liberals advance through the ranks thanks to the social conveyor belt that public employee organizations and their bosses use. However, their management cupboard is empty when they reach the top. They lack the mental tools or training they need to navigate a issue. When Bass was questioned by investigators after returning from a trip in Ghana, she stood silent and shellshocked in a jetway at the airports.
If you’re capable of navigating the crisis, it’s irrelevant whether you’re the first female, dark governor of Los Angeles. Or to quote Socrates, disasters bring politicians ‘ character to the level of their riches. The flames have revealed Mayor Bass ‘ figure.
We are witnessing the decline of authority and credibility across all levels of government, and as my pal observed, it happened slowly, then immediately. In deep-blue southern California, the president’s target at all degrees seems to have shifted from serving citizens to low-grade philosophical preaching fueled by DEI. Little works, and worse than that, anyone expects anything to operate.
Los Angeles spent tens of billions on a massive poverty problem that has caused some of the city’s sidewalks to become something that isn’t out of place in Calcutta. The state’s system is crumbling. There are frequent water shortages and electricity blackouts. It is completely plausible that Los Angeles may put more effort into painting fire hydrants with pleasure colors in light of this backdrop of failing and mismanagement to make sure those same hydrants had the pressure needed to fight fires — or water.
And this is perhaps the scariest aspect of all. La is widespread. A Karen Bass or someone like her is a leader at every level of state, local, and national government in California because it has embraced it. Perhaps she’s your town’s fire chief, more focused on achieving specific “diversity” objectives for her office and finding individuals who resemble her than ensuring that firefighters are properly trained and equipped for the work.
Bass is not an exception. She is merely the most well-known illustration of this new phenomenon because events conspired to highlight her and the spacious, costly, worryingly ineffective government over which she presides. She is not a head because she never had to be, and it should not surprise me how she performed when the light was on her brightest and most cruel. She is the by-product of a program that benefits and prioritizes qualities another than merit, ability, and skill. Unfortunately, the system that made Bass the governor of Los Angeles is still in place and is spread all over.
Patrick ‘ System’ Bobko is a previous two-term City Council part and Mayor of Hermosa Beach, California. System is a happy Air Force Veteran and a student of the American Air Force Academy. He presently practices legislation in Southern California.
