Los Angeles wildfires. Why we need to talk about capitalism
Armageddon? Apocalypse? End of Days? Dante’s Inferno?
You can take your pick from the above descriptors but currently raging now in the US city most synonymous with the mythos of the American Dream, is a natural event that is biblical entire. The city — or more specifically its most affluent and iconic parts — is burning to the ground. The symbolism alone is next level.
I spent some of my best and my worst times in Los Angeles: seven years in total over different periods from the early nineties all the way up to the mid noughties. My last time there was in 2016, and it was like revisiting hell on earth. The sheer level of poverty, homelessness, immiseration and human despair that exists alongside the inordinate wealth and ostentation associated with Hollywood’s rich and famous, provides you with an insight into the dragon’s teeth sown by a capitalist economic and value system that has entered its mad dog days.
The result is a vast ocean of human disaffection which, being allowed to go unchecked or resolved, has produced a society headed for the abyss at warp speed.
What does this have to do with the wildfires that have wrought such devastation, you may ask? This is all to do with climate change, surely.
Overlooked in this easy assumption is the role of a person or persons with an axe to grind engaging in an act or acts of arson. I have little doubt that this was at least a factor, exacerbated by the propitious conditions for what has taken place due to the ongoing climate emergency.
Western civilization has proven itself to be an oxymoron. The continuing slaughter on the killing fields of Ukraine in the name of maintaining US-led Western hegemony: the continuing genocidal slaughter in Palestine in the name of ethno-supremacy and ethno-fascism: environmental degradation: mass migration: pandemics — the evidence is both concrete and overwhelming.
Fiddling while Rome burned has long been a feature of our historical understanding of the dangers inherent in allowing insanity to direct human affairs. We look back at the Neros and Caligulas et al. with no conception of the possibility that rather than the historical outliers commonly depicted, they are more rule than exception.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump constitute two sides of the psychopathic and megalomaniacal coin. Leaders in the twilight of their lives who’re in possession of a nuclear arsenal and unbounded military power; such leaders have less to lose and more to gain when it comes to dragging the world down into the depths of hell with them.
Ultimately, the footage of Hollywood burning has a Sodom and Gomorrah element to it. The scenes of people running for their lives, of roads filled with abandoned vehicles, are something straight from the kind of disaster movies Hollywood as an industry has specialized in producing over decades.
Many of the victims of this horrific event have been left completely bereft. When we learn that the insurance policies of many had been cancelled by various insurance companies just months prior. When we learn that many, those belonging to the less affluent demographic that resides in this part of the world, could not afford insurance cover and have had to suffer the anguish of seeing their condos burned to the ground, questions as to the viability and sustainability of the status quo have to be asked — and also answered.
The political recriminations have already begun. Trump has leveled a full on attack against California Governor Gavin Newsom’s legacy and competency. Newsm has mounted a determined defense of both. However, until we reach the point at which late stage capitalism itself is in the dock, no progress will be made.
This particular point cannot come soon enough.
End.
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