I will admit that, in my earlier ramblings on the subject (even when I said things like “complex products relying on sound engineering and science that pose any kind of potential safety issue in your life will become suspect in the not-so-distant future” and “it will become more obvious piece by piece in specific tragic events across other industries as time goes on”), I was not even close to fully comprehending the scope and magnitude of large scale societal destruction and the resulting human tragedy that the Democrats of the state of California and the City of Los Angeles have demonstrated for us this week.
[Hugh Hewitt] traces the total government failure that has led to the present fiery crisis: the lack of water management, despite billions of dollars in appropriations; the incompetent woodland management, driven by environmentalists; recent cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget; fire hydrants that, for whatever reason, don’t produce any water; DEI in the fire department; and a homeless crisis that has contributed to one arson after another.
“In 2014, Californians passed a bond measure to finally do something about capturing rain and snowpack run-off before it blends into the Pacific Ocean, becoming useless as both drinking water and fire defense. Proposition 1 passed overwhelmingly, and voters paid $7.5 billion dollars, at least theoretically, to make it happen. Gavin Newsom has been the governor of California for the past six of those 10 years. Would you like to take a stab at how many of these new reservoir or water capture systems have been completed? You’re absolutely right. Zero. Quadrillions of gallons of fresh water has been lost, or worse, intentionally pumped to the ocean. …
“Insurance companies pulled out of the L.A. basin years ago because state regulators would not allow them to adjust their rates to cover the increased exposure risk that was growing along with all the undergrowth and brush in the hills that the state refused to cut back. Insurance companies knew trouble was coming. Everyone honestly knew this day would eventually come, but Gavin Newsom would love for you to believe it’s climate change’s fault and just one of those things that’s unavoidable.”
Donald Trump, never one to stay on the sidelines during a crisis, says that California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, is to blame for the destructive fires:
“…[Newsom] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snowmelt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Mr Trump said on his Truth social account. …
…Most other states have continued to follow sound forest management practices, while California has been captured by radical environmentalists. The result? More wildfires in California.
So Trump likely is right with regard to the water restoration act to which he refers. Beyond that, liberal control of California, as currently manifested in Gavin Newsom, has been responsible for increased wildfires at a time when globally, wildfires are at an all-time low, and in the U.S., they are down dramatically from 80 years ago.
“It was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention and forest management, a viable insurance industry,…you put it all together and it’s something like a DEI Green New Deal hydrogen bomb.” …
“And Karen Bass should resign. She came to the airport back from Africa. She had nothing to say. She was confronted at the airport. Why were you in Africa? Why did you cut the fire department? They cut the fire department by almost $18 million. They gave fire protective equipment to Ukraine’s first responders. And she had nothing to say. She had nothing to say because she couldn’t say anything.” …
“And if this continues, and if this were to spread to other states, we would become a third world country if we’re not in parts already.”
Horrific. Sad. So very infuriating.
Don’t get me wrong, the thousands of little “fires” that will still come from the insidious corporate models of this will probably be even more destructive to the nation as a whole. Not much can top the burning of entire sections of one of our largest cities across two or three news cycles…but the corrosive impact of lost businesses (direct and indirect), lost jobs, lost neighborhoods to the un-Holy gods of DEI is going to slowly eat away at the structure of this country for years to come. The awareness is now being forced on those willing to see…unfortunately, much of the damage is still unseen and/or unacknowledged…and irreversible. The coming realizations will be very (similarly) painful.
*** The earlier ramblings on the subject (from November 2022 and October 2024) reference above:
Yesterday, under an excellent post titled Darwin Would Vote for VanceI focused on part of the closing sentiments that stressed how the current media are “shallow” and “hyper partisan” and “idiot news mediocrities”…and how this state of affairs serves as an enabler for the death spiral of the Republic we have been witnessing for the last decade and a half (or longer). While many of you are likely well aware from personal experience, it is worth repeated warnings to the broader community that varieties of this unnatural selection toward shallowness and mediocrity are not limited to the modern media complex, and it will eventually have important impacts in many other aspects of our lives:
A version of this story can be easily composed about most corporations / industries these days…where the Potemkin Diversity* of a dozen years ago has now morphed into shallow, dysfunctional management (none dare call it actual leadership). The results are obvious today in the public facing interfaces of the media industry; it will become more obvious piece by piece in specific tragic events across other industries as time goes on (think Boeing)…most will be more (immediately) risky to life and limb than the suicide of American journalism.
(*In the early days of this phenomenon, diversity hires and even whole departments were conspicuously placed throughout the upper organizations to boost the publishable numbers. This worked for a time because the organizational structure was still “mostly” populated by merit-based hires or all colors, sexes, and beliefs that ensured technical competence based on the thought, understanding, and complex reasoning that comes with genuine experience. Over time, however, after collecting many conspicuous honors and promotions on top of padding their resumes with pseudo-credentials, the Potemkin became the upper organizational structure and not just that false facade. With the attrition of the genuinely experienced workforce, the impact to these institutions will likely be irreversible. Welcome to your future.)
Well, it turns out I had written on this topic back during my time away from Ricochet and, while the selfish me just wants it in my posting history here also, it may also prove of interest to those who peruse my posts in the Lower Member Feed. Enjoy:
I do not pretend that there are not many aspects of the modern social condition that can be read into the set of pictures presented above. No doubt there are grains (or entire strains) of truth in many of them. (Agendas differ and mileage may vary.) But I assure you, the most accurate and most important is the clear-cut demonstration of an insidious plague that is consuming critical corporate entities from sea to shining sea: conspicuous diversity.
It always starts as a façade to appease the woke overlords. In that form it appears rather harmless but is actually highly corrosive to the host entity…the real “impacts” are largely hidden from the surface but are galvanically and irreversibly eating away at the underlying structure of the company. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the necessary progression of the long-term promotion of this unnatural state is for the façade to become seen as the entity itself…even by those close to it (and who should know better). In the end, the conspicuously cultivated façade – entirely too young, inexperienced, and ill-prepared – is transitioned into the offices they were only ever meant to supplement (i.e., provide visual balance for). Many will attain those positions fifteen or more years earlier in their career than their predecessors did…and with an even larger “practical experience gap.” (And don’t even get me started on the hollow credentials “those of the façade” were awarded along the way. But I digress.)
The Twitter example above seems to indicate still being in the early stages of the disease. Or maybe the corporate structure / business model is such that it can better manage the façade. But this is not true of larger, more complex operations and the impacts to life as we have grown to know it will not be minimal.
Consider this your warning: Complex products relying on sound engineering and science that pose any kind of potential safety issue in your life will become suspect in the not-so-distant future. For the record, I suspect I will cease trusting my life to anything that operates on turbomachinery at a substantial altitude after about 2030. (In a related phenomenon, too many critical entities already strive to assemble the most “diverse supplier base” instead of the “best supplier base” for my comfort. Just think about that one for a while! But I digress.) Once you see the issue, other examples will flow rather freely.
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