“Extreme turmoil” is a soft term for describing the geopolitical state of North America right now. Between Donald Trump‘s recent reelection, his bizarre obsession with merging Canada and the United States, and the resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, these tensions come very close to reflecting a minuscule fraction of the much more pressing and devastating issue of the Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles.
It perhaps goes without saying that this is a dreadful and heartbreaking disaster that deserves the utmost attention and humanity from anyone and everyone, so naturally, Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene focused on lacerating California governor Gavin Newsom (a Democrat, of course) instead.
Greene is right about one thing, though; Canada (the country, not the state, as she is puts it) has been sending firefighting planes into California to help deal with the wildfires, except it’s to help citizens that have been affected by the disaster, not to “bail out” Newsom. Trudeau’s own response reflects that sentiment quite nicely.
But I, a Canadian, am not here to tell you how much better Justin Trudeau is than America’s elected officials. The empathetic energy surrounding Trudeau’s tweet is important and refreshing, to be sure, and it also harbors a distinct lack of the one-upmanship that Trump, Marjorie, and so many other major political figures double down on day after day. In the spirit of that, what would I truly be accomplishing by focusing on Trump’s and Greene’s embarrassing conduct instead of the actual problem that’s affecting real people?
As of earlier this morning, five major wildfires continue to burn throughout the Los Angeles area, having claimed upwards of 27,000 acres and damaging over 1500 buildings to an effectively unsalvageable degree. Three of these five wildfires had zero percent containment around the same time, and five deaths have been confirmed thus far, to say nothing of the countless injuries.
Direct Relief, a humanitarian organization headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, is currently accepting donations to the California Wildfire Response, which can be made here.
One thing you shouldn’t do, however, is use the wildfires as an excuse to venomously rage against a political opponent (who, by the way, wasn’t quite as lax on firefighting policy as some might have you believe). You especially shouldn’t do this if you could be using your platform (and money, if you happen to be ultra-wealthy) to mobilize an even greater relief response than what Newsom, Trudeau, and the countless folks risking their lives to assist and evacuate civilians, are already contributing to.
Could Newsom and his colleagues have done a better job of pre-empting this disaster and having more resources in place to combat it? Whatever the answer may be, there’s a time and a place to sit down and assess what, if anything, could have been done better, and who should take responsibility for doing those things better. The middle of the most devastating wildfire in the history of Los Angeles is no such time, and Twitter is certainly no such place.
But then, when the purpose of your political existence boils down to exerting control over the world, dividing civilians into pathetic and meaningless culture wars, and ballooning your own social capital at the cost of human life and livelihood, is there even such a time or a place?