In January 2025, wildfires devastated Los Angeles County.
While not every detail is yet known – and some details will likely never be known – these fires have destroyed entire communities, burned thousands of houses, schools, churches and businesses, killed and injured people and pets.
The losses in physical structure can be counted; the losses in dollar value can only be guessed at. Property insurance figures estimate the value of a building, but the residents can never accurately estimate – and insure for – all the contents within.
The victims of these wildfires have lost a hundred years or more of family photo albums, precious heirlooms like grandma’s sterling silverware and grandpa’s hunting rifle, children’s mementos from school plays, choir performances, baseball games, debate championships. Great grandma’s engagement ring might have been insured; great grandpa’s graduation picture from his WWII change of command ceremony would not have been; both are irreplaceable.
Because of its location, this tragedy has claimed more famous victims than any other tragedy in decades, possibly in history. Writers, actors, producers, novelists and professors, businessmen and reporters, have all lost homes and possessions in this one. These are the people who drive the pop culture. Their opinions will be heard; their revised worldview will drive the public outcry, the public response, and the eventual public attitude as future elections arise in its wake.
Already, the wrong lessons are being pushed in official talking points; already, the proper reaction is being blunted.
We are told that Gov. Gavin Newsom was a bad governor, too full of himself and his White House ambitions. We are told he didn’t prioritize the right issues; he should be thrown under the bus. His 2028 presidential hopes are toast.
We are told that Mayor Karen Bass was a bad mayor, too interested in DEI appointments and political projects. We are told that she cut the fire budget to support unimportant donations; she left the country to celebrate a coronation in Ghana instead of staying home and doing her job. We are told she must be forced to resign; this mayor’s political career and reputation are toast.
Having claimed these two scalps, the conventional wisdom will be satisfied; the Democrats will choose different people to replace them on their next ballots. The Democrat party in the practically one-party autocracy of California has an endless supply of replacement candidates with the resume of your choosing. They have candidates who speak Spanish or Mandarin, whichever is deemed necessary. Candidates with engineering degrees or CPAs, candidates who work as lawyers or hairdressers. The party will put their pictures before focus groups, select someone who fits the day’s desired narrative, and move on. The victims should be happy that the party heard their complaints and made these changes. Life will go on, much as before.
They must not be allowed to get away with this.
Because, the fact is, the Newsom/Bass wildfires of 2025 weren’t really entirely the fault of Newsom and Bass. These two politicians just happened to be in office when it all happened. In fact, they did exactly what their party wanted them to do.
The dirty little secret – the one they’ve said out loud for decades but still never expected to be fully revealed – is that the protection of human beings, of private and public property, of lives and livelihoods – is just not a Democrat party value.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
It’s not Gavin Newsom alone who protected a stupid fish at the expense of retaining rainwater; California Democrats have been putting obscure animals ahead of working people and their food sources for a generation, long before any of us ever heard of Nancy Pelosi’s slick nephew.
It’s not Karen Bass alone who sacrificed the fire department in order to overspend on silly and unimportant bureaucracies, allowing critical fire hydrants to be dry by making unlimited tax dollars available instead for homeless addicts and illegal aliens. The Democratic Party has been sacrificing all our interests on the altar of political correctness for generations.
It’s not Newsom and Bass who didn’t care, don’t care, and aren’t expected to care about their constituents’ needs. It’s the Democratic Party itself that advocates these policies – positions that have made these politicians heroes in their party for years.
Remember, insurance companies were fleeing the Southern California market for several years before this month’s wildfires. Insurance companies employ statisticians, financial analysts, actuaries, risk managers, many of whom have been shouting from the rooftops that California hasn’t been taking proper measures to either prevent or prepare for wildfires, warning that at this rate, the danger was getting worse and worse by the day.
How did the California Democrats react to this warning? They attacked the insurance companies in the press, and limited the premiums that these insurers were allowed to charge for coverage, driving many insurers out of the state — instead of responding to the insurance companies’ accurate warnings by improving their infrastructure and beefing up their readiness, as any sane government would.
It is not an exaggeration to acknowledge that, instead of heeding a prescient messenger’s warnings, California Democrats chose to shoot the messenger.
What the Democrats – and their support structure in education, unions, pop culture and the press – all desperately need to happen now is for the electorate to accept their personalization of these colossal failures – failures that directly led to the absolute destruction of Malibu, Pacific Palisades, and who knows how much more of Los Angeles County by the time this thing is over.
Blame Newsom. Blame Bass.
But this personalization is a lie.
Illegal alien criminals – such as at least one of the known arsonists – are invited into the United States on purpose, as Democrat party policy.
Raiding the budgets of civil protection departments such as fire and police, specifically in order to puff up wasteful and destructive bureaucracies and create well-paying patronage jobs for DEI party hacks, is Democrat party policy.
Prioritizing fish, birds, and rodents over working people, families, employers and homeowners, is Democrat party policy.
Funding and attracting criminals, indigents, and criminal indigent foreigners with generous welfare state benefits, at the direct cost of government’s proper services for its deserving constituents, is Democrat party policy.
And regulating insurance companies to death until they are driven into bankruptcy or taken over by megalomaniacal government bureaucrats, at the expense of their customers and shareholders, is Democrat party policy as well.
It is inconceivable that any other California Democrat politician would have made significantly different choices in recent years than Los Angeles and Sacramento did. If Newsom’s advisors and Bass’s advisors had disagreed with their bosses about water policy, funding policy, or staffing policy, we would have heard about it; but no. The Democratic Party marches in lockstep on these matters.
The fact is clear, whether we want to admit it or not. The Democratic Party doesn’t protect your jobs from the unfair competition of Chinese slave labor; they don’t protect your children from illegal alien drug dealers and rapists. They don’t protect your church or school, your employer or your neighborhood. And they certainly don’t protect your home from fire.
Republican politicians may be dull and uninspiring, but at least they recognize that government’s first and foremost job is to provide the protective services — like police, fire, and national defense — for which we institute governments in the first place.
The only real solution – not just for California but for the entire country – is for the Democratic Party’s status as a major political party to be the next thing to go up in smoke.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker. Read his book on the surprisingly numerous varieties of vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris years (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his 2024 collection of public policy essays, Current Events and the Issues of Our Age, all available in eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
Image: Monica Showalter, with use of public domain sources
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