I was going to nursing school at LA county hospital and I lived in campus( rent was$85 a month compared to $800 a month in the valley) and I had never really seen homeless people before. Leaving campus, dressed up for dinner, I saw a man lying in the street with his walker. Someone said he was hit by a bus. I couldn't just drive by and no one would help so I loaded him into my car to take him up the drive to the ER. He gets in the passenger seat and lights a cig. I said"please put that out". He said something I didn't quite get but continued smoking. So I bring him to the ER ambulance dock. And I run in and get the nurse. She takes one look and called him by name. She snarkily says" give me your number so I can call you when he's done here sweetie". I was so appalled at her lack of compassion I swore I would NEVER be a nurse like her!
Turns out he wasa movie stars' brother and a frequent flyer for 3 hours and a cot alcoholic. Apparently his brother tried for years to help but finally gave up they said.
I was a young and naive upper middle class white girl and my heart bled for the poor homeless guy. I had never really seen that in my neck of the woods. ( SF valley) Of course I was a liberal.
Fast forward 40 years and now I'm hanging on to middle class by the skin of my teeth, an old white lady that would NEVER put a guy she didn't know in her car who ,some days, has to dig really deep to feel sorry for guys like him. I've spent these years caring for tons of homeless people that treat you like shit on their shoes. ( Not all of them but the vast majority) And most refuse the help you spend hours arranging because , well...." rules". So you discharge them to their imaginary address and see them again in a couple weeks. When they run out of whatever it is they abuse. Or the pity they live on dries up. Or they OD,get infected,beat up, etc etc.
By the grace of God, I never did become THAT nurse but I did become a conservative and leave California about 25 years ago. I work in Washington and it's just a smaller version of Cali. But I live in Idaho and we don't have that problem in our town.It is a resort town and the cops don't tolerate sleeping on the streets. I hear the Dem infested capitol of Boise does though.
Interesting note: when the snow flies, the homeless problem drops way off. I wonder where they go and how they get there.
One thing I've learned from running a soup kitchen and being a nurse: there's a whole lot of homeless people that don't want to be a part of "our"society. They want to do their drugs and have no rules and they expect hand outs to keep them going. There's a lot that are just too mentally ill to function as well. There are some, mostly young, that do want help. But this delusion that if we just did this or that they can all be functioning, happy members of society? That just makes people feel better throwing money at it.
I don't know what the solution is but I think the mentally ill need to be institutionalized, the criminal types need to be locked up and we need to stop ripping the ones that don't want to get better out of the grave over and over again so we can utilize the limited resources on the ones that do. That's my idea of compassion these days.
I agree with you 100%! I was a therapist for many years who worked in drug/alcohol programs mostly at county mental health facility. I had LOTS of homeless clients. Many did take the help offered, got clean and sober and lived productive lives and became good parents. But far too many didn't get help, had no ambition and just expected society to take care of them. I have to agree with you, the ones who don't really want to get better need to just be left alone to meet their end. I don't like thinking like that but I see no other option. Maybe we have an area in each city that is only for the homeless, and they aren't allowed to leave that area so they can't commit crimes against decent people. Have it fenced off so they can't escape. That's pretty much what the English govt did with Australia, shipped their worst prisoners there.
The problem is how many people they drag down with them.
The problem with California specifically is the government enabling the self-destructive habits. There are literally quaNGOs that assist people in their destructive ways and tell them “You’ll get better once we have Communism.” Which is not only seditious it is also a lie - ask some Soviets how much alcoholism increased after communism fell; alcoholism fell when communism fell.
Advocates for mor government are junkies and create junkies. I wish i knew how to stop the positive feedback loop quickly but I don’t think there is a quick solution.
Are moderate temperatures really worth all this bullshit?
How do they get there? Well, in San francisco, they go down to the homeless benefits office on Mission Street, and go over to the table where a couple of cops are sitting who arrange free bus trips to wherever they want to go to. It's slightly more complicated than that, but not really.
A very thoughtful and life experience comment. From the sound of it you likely live in North Idaho either near CDA or Moscow. That you can work in WA but live in Idaho. For the the most part IMO North Idaho is the better part politically and socially of Idaho.
There's a fire raging through Central Oregon right now, and -- you might want to sit down for this -- it started in the middle of a homeless encampment in the woods.
Washington state's capital city, Olympia, has oodles of tramps clustering heavily in the parks and in any stand of trees they can get away with. Which in that area is much of it, it still having a lot of verdant wooded parcels that are considered to exist for no reasons other than tramp camps or waiting to be clearcut and developed into strandboard mortgage-slave Revittown camps for the financial interest of distant REIT investors.
Emergency calls for "brush" fires are frequent in the Designated Tramp Camps on land both public and private, according to people who listen to the local police and fire scanners in that city/county.
Local “homeless advocates” protect their rice bowl by howling plaintively that more programs, more money, and of course more “homeless advocates” are needed.
Nobody ever suggests advocates for the “homed.” Or the wild lands and creatures.
Politicians both elected and appointed have zero incentive to do anything about the problem, since being non-PC is a far bigger sin than enabling crime and mayhem.
The gorgeous forested campus of Evergreen State outside of town has been a tramp magnet for as long as anyone can remember but increasingly so since the mid teens and especially since the TDS/BLM frenzies of 2016-17. Piles of trash and feces, toxics thrown in streams/ponds/wetlands/the Sound, fires, assaults, rapes, tortured animals nailed to trees, syringes bristling from treebark, etc., were common, but the college’s E-suite wankers just kinda slid out from under the issue.
Oh yeah, and bravely, bodice-heavingly, made it policy that lawful concealed or open carry was not allowed on the campus. So that any law abiding person venturing onto campus was defined as prey of their pet tramps and deranged lefties.
A few summers ago, only the hand of Ukko prevented on Evergreen State’s campus what an emergency team manager told me “would have been a historic, mass casualty event of national headlines.” I.e., Ukko switched off the dry hot winds that had been blowing for several days, just hours before a methie set himself, his tent, and a couple bone-dry acres on fire in the campus woods. Within hours of the knockdown and all clear, the winds came back. Terve Ukko!
I was told that it would have been much worse as it was, had the flaming-human-torch tramp not been able to stagger to the nearby emergency pillar phone that a forward-thinking white guy at the college had fought for years and despite intense administrative opposition to have installed there at the “organic farm.”
It seems that in prior years, the hippies at the "farm" had been running off-radar a biodiesel still there in the big trees, with repeated unrequested flame surpluses. That guy figured it was just a matter of time before they triggered an “accident” (inevitable outcome) of massive local consequence. He embarked on a multi-year battle to get an emergency phone pillar funded and installed near the cluster of buildings where the biodiesel still was located.
The biodiesel experiment ended, the phone remained, and fortunately was working the day that Trampy McMethHead tried to Darwinize not just himself, but hundreds of adjacent people, their homes, and countless wild creatures.
But look on the bright side--insurers are ramping up premiums massively, rubbing their hands as they do. Whether it's "climate change" or "homeless," the Usual Suspects make out like the raiders they are.
...but she cares so deeply! I'm sure she'll hire a study of the problem, pay consultants, ask for more money from the state and federal coffers, work closely with her NGOs, establish a task force of local leaders, create new, equitable policies for those minority stake-holders effected most in this situation along with the appropriate land acknowledgement of the indigenous populations who used to steward the area... and raise monumental amounts of political donations to ensure that her administration would be present for the future resolution to the issue on behalf of all.
Bass is always grinning, like the Joker, because she knows that despite being worthless and perhaps the worst mayor Los Angeles has ever had, she will be re-elected as mayor because of the dolts and morons who live in Los Angeles. Plus the election rigging apparatus the Dems have put in place for decades.
I thought the same. Expressions like hers have been used to good effect in horror movies and villains like the Joker in Batman. Like Kamala’s cackle (not laughter, not joy) its’ inappropriateness should trigger recoil in the human brain. I often wonder if we’re losing some ancient ability to identify threats.
In 2003 I traveled to Brazil with my daughter’s soccer team. We landed in Rio and the first sight we saw after getting on the bus were the favelas on the hillsides next to the highway underpasses. I was shocked that anyone could live like that. For one obvious reason, where does the sewage go? Downhill somewhere….I thought to myself that surely this couldn’t happen anywhere in MY country. How naive I was 20 years ago.
Same here. That was also going through my mind from this post. Went to Bahia Blanca after landing in Rio. While waiting at a small airport for a connection there was a semi riot in which the glass looking out onto the tarmac was destroyed. I don't know what triggered it except the plane was late. The threat "Police" was broadcast and all the angry people suddenly sat down. The razor wire around the restaurants, the driving Russian roulette - no passing zones and stop lights are a "suggestion" and use the taxi contracted by your company or you will be robed and likely kidnapped for ransom. The site leader I worked with had recently been robbed driving home (bandits block the road but stopping at a red light is just as useful for them). Fun times. The US had been seeded, with all the imported gangs.
This is incredible. Are the democrat voters of LA and California part of a huge plot? Probably not, it would take much more intelligence to run such a plot. To live under the rule of the total fecklessness and stupidity of Bass, Newsom, the California Legislature, the LA county council, etc. is like being an addict. You know it is killing you, but you just can't stop until it does.
It isn't a plot, the voters really are that stupid. They are tribalists and their tribe is marked with a "D" behind the name. If you are expecting them to "come to their senses", you are a fool. And to be fair, when you find a solid red district in a solid red state, it isn't really any better.
I'm 70 y.o. and was born and raised in L.A., lived in CA most of my life. Elections there have been stolen for eons, truth is that Trump won CA in 2020 presidential election - I saw a map of states Trump won that was done by Real Clear Politics. TONS of people were on the streets in L.A. holding rallies to elect Trump, lots of them were young people. When I went to vote, I saw the cheating for myself. A couple years ago there was a recall of Gavin Gruesome and 2 people who didn't know each other but worked the polls, both said 93% of voters voted to recall him. Gruesome ignored it and stayed in office. There was nothing the voters could do about it.
It’s astonishing, isn’t it? And Sepulveda basin is surrounded by very expensive real estate — these are not poor neighborhoods! There is something systemically wrong with our society where the elite are so rich, yet so self-destructive.
Historically that has often been the case. California’s rich population reminds me of the French nobles of Revolutionary days. They thought that they were protected by their wealth from everything that was crashing around them. Eventually, events caught up and destroyed them. They looked around and discovered what reality looked like. California cannot continue with this lack of the appreciation of their reality.
I was thinking of the historical examples. Almost every society eventually fell victim to the hubris of the wealthy who keep passing out enough free stuff to keep the peeps quiet. When that runs out, the tumbrils will roll.
The guilt of immense wealth, especially when inherited is ingrained in our culture. Just look at the media treatment of the wealthy who don’t bow to the progressive agenda. They don’t necessarily do anything about social ills but the sure do virtue signal.
Back in the 80s, when I was young and fit, I jogged frequently in the basin. It was a nice bit of wild space in the middle of the valley. Thousands used it daily. It was safe, and the vibe was pure exercise.
I looked at your picture and read your story. My heart aches. LA used to be one of our great cities. Dumb Ass Bass didn't start the decline; she is just managing it to its conclusion. Great writing as always, Chris, even if it makes me sad.
The experience and grief you express is shared by at least tens of millions of people, Wayne, regarding cities all over this nation. It goes largely unexpressed. Not only is the storytelling difficult, it's not welcome. Forbidden even.
This is one of the superpowers of "shock doctrine" power. Trauma creates grief. Grievers are extremely vulnerable people. So even the pettiest aspirants to political and economic power can seize it. Particularly if they punish expressions of the griefs their traumas induce.
You note that our thanatophilic society talks a lot about death...but rarely to never deals with grief. That's left for grievers to go off, like lepers, and deal with on their/our own.
Knowing how to fix problems would require one to do mean stuff, such as relocating “those affected by houselessness” and possibly exposing them to exploitation by evil capitalism in the form of jobs. Maybe solving problems acknowledges the need for law enforcement and a “carceral system”. YOU MIGHT EVEN HAVE TO (gasp!) TELL CHILDREN NO SOMETIMES. And everyone knows you can’t be mean.
Reading you for these past couple of years ago and following the detailed description of the dismantling of the largest economy in the union, from which so much good for the Union and mankind generally has come from, has been very depressing. It brings to mind the old French saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same". I'm glad you have documented in detail this catastrophe, like both the Plinys did of the Roman Empire, so posterity can study how this occurred with the complete support of the majority of the citizenry, even those who had the most to lose.
The burning will continue. The crime will continue The drug use will continue. The lies about climate change and transsexualism and Islam and borders will continue. The cheating in elections will continue. The demoralization and theft of the nation's identity will continue.
Everything will continue unless and until we stop it. You get the behavior you tolerate. Trump's demonstration in D.C. with the National Guard this past two weeks shows you that you don't have to live like this. It's just a slog. The Commies never quit. The judicial branch of the Communist party is now the vanguard. They put up an illegal injunction every 30 minutes or so. They use our legal system against the country. Commies have to be removed from positions of responsibility. You can believe any stupid, destructive thing you like. You can say stupid stuff. But you can't be sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution and actively work to undermine it. You can't take Federal dollars for your university and try to destroy the country. In the real world, woke goes broke. That needs to happen in the institutional sphere as well. If you want to live in Venezuela, move to Venezuela. You can't live in the suburbs, make $500,000, have every convenience and amenity available to you because of the American system, and simultaneously trash the American system.
Half measures don't work, they just slow the rate of decay for a bit. For example - punishing the universities for violating Jewish students civil rights by fining them isn't enough. People have to be terminated from employment, enrollment, and some need to go to prison. We also can't have protection of IP if we're gonna take 300,000 Chinese foreign students a year in American universities. It's absurd. We can't have allies that undermine us continuously. Look at Turkey for example.
If you want to stop the fires, you stop the fires. If you don't want to stop the fires, they continue. It's not more complicated than that. Everybody knows what the problems are. Not everybody wants to solve the problems.
It’s sad. Same thing (as I’m sure you know) in the parks of the San Gabriel Valley, though those aren’t under the jurisdiction of Mayor Bass. Heck, back in 1993 the Kinneloa Fire was started by a homeless guy with a fire in Eaton Canyon in Pasadena.
As I may have commented here before (I think it was in the context of personal safety in LA-area parks), it puts the well-meaning folks in the various environmental/outdoor activity groups in a bit of a pickle: they’re understandably unhappy about the trashing of these natural areas, but politically paralyzed from saying anything critical of the “unhoused.”
My wife and I were at a dinner party recently. Our hostess announced how she really liked Gavin Newsom, and hopes he runs for POTUS. All others were dumbfounded and asked, "Why?"
I was going to nursing school at LA county hospital and I lived in campus( rent was$85 a month compared to $800 a month in the valley) and I had never really seen homeless people before. Leaving campus, dressed up for dinner, I saw a man lying in the street with his walker. Someone said he was hit by a bus. I couldn't just drive by and no one would help so I loaded him into my car to take him up the drive to the ER. He gets in the passenger seat and lights a cig. I said"please put that out". He said something I didn't quite get but continued smoking. So I bring him to the ER ambulance dock. And I run in and get the nurse. She takes one look and called him by name. She snarkily says" give me your number so I can call you when he's done here sweetie". I was so appalled at her lack of compassion I swore I would NEVER be a nurse like her!
Turns out he wasa movie stars' brother and a frequent flyer for 3 hours and a cot alcoholic. Apparently his brother tried for years to help but finally gave up they said.
I was a young and naive upper middle class white girl and my heart bled for the poor homeless guy. I had never really seen that in my neck of the woods. ( SF valley) Of course I was a liberal.
Fast forward 40 years and now I'm hanging on to middle class by the skin of my teeth, an old white lady that would NEVER put a guy she didn't know in her car who ,some days, has to dig really deep to feel sorry for guys like him. I've spent these years caring for tons of homeless people that treat you like shit on their shoes. ( Not all of them but the vast majority) And most refuse the help you spend hours arranging because , well...." rules". So you discharge them to their imaginary address and see them again in a couple weeks. When they run out of whatever it is they abuse. Or the pity they live on dries up. Or they OD,get infected,beat up, etc etc.
By the grace of God, I never did become THAT nurse but I did become a conservative and leave California about 25 years ago. I work in Washington and it's just a smaller version of Cali. But I live in Idaho and we don't have that problem in our town.It is a resort town and the cops don't tolerate sleeping on the streets. I hear the Dem infested capitol of Boise does though.
Interesting note: when the snow flies, the homeless problem drops way off. I wonder where they go and how they get there.
One thing I've learned from running a soup kitchen and being a nurse: there's a whole lot of homeless people that don't want to be a part of "our"society. They want to do their drugs and have no rules and they expect hand outs to keep them going. There's a lot that are just too mentally ill to function as well. There are some, mostly young, that do want help. But this delusion that if we just did this or that they can all be functioning, happy members of society? That just makes people feel better throwing money at it.
I don't know what the solution is but I think the mentally ill need to be institutionalized, the criminal types need to be locked up and we need to stop ripping the ones that don't want to get better out of the grave over and over again so we can utilize the limited resources on the ones that do. That's my idea of compassion these days.
A lifetime of real-world experience in this comment.
I agree with you 100%! I was a therapist for many years who worked in drug/alcohol programs mostly at county mental health facility. I had LOTS of homeless clients. Many did take the help offered, got clean and sober and lived productive lives and became good parents. But far too many didn't get help, had no ambition and just expected society to take care of them. I have to agree with you, the ones who don't really want to get better need to just be left alone to meet their end. I don't like thinking like that but I see no other option. Maybe we have an area in each city that is only for the homeless, and they aren't allowed to leave that area so they can't commit crimes against decent people. Have it fenced off so they can't escape. That's pretty much what the English govt did with Australia, shipped their worst prisoners there.
The problem is how many people they drag down with them.
The problem with California specifically is the government enabling the self-destructive habits. There are literally quaNGOs that assist people in their destructive ways and tell them “You’ll get better once we have Communism.” Which is not only seditious it is also a lie - ask some Soviets how much alcoholism increased after communism fell; alcoholism fell when communism fell.
Advocates for mor government are junkies and create junkies. I wish i knew how to stop the positive feedback loop quickly but I don’t think there is a quick solution.
Are moderate temperatures really worth all this bullshit?
Fantastic commentary. I’d like to send this to Karen Bass.
100% truth.
See it every week at the church charity.
Saw it every day and night when I was briefly homeless in my late teens.
And in the city, when I had night-jobs and such.
Round'em up, sort and segregate by type, and process accordingly. Because nothing else works at all.
The Washington/Portland homeless travel south along the 101 or I5 to California for the winter. Much better weather and similar "services."
How do they get there? Well, in San francisco, they go down to the homeless benefits office on Mission Street, and go over to the table where a couple of cops are sitting who arrange free bus trips to wherever they want to go to. It's slightly more complicated than that, but not really.
A very thoughtful and life experience comment. From the sound of it you likely live in North Idaho either near CDA or Moscow. That you can work in WA but live in Idaho. For the the most part IMO North Idaho is the better part politically and socially of Idaho.
There's a fire raging through Central Oregon right now, and -- you might want to sit down for this -- it started in the middle of a homeless encampment in the woods.
Climate change is really nasty this time of year.
https://x.com/kevinvdahlgren/status/1959988690807398407
And of course you never ever hear about the cause of 99% of these fires. It’s always “climate change.”
Washington state's capital city, Olympia, has oodles of tramps clustering heavily in the parks and in any stand of trees they can get away with. Which in that area is much of it, it still having a lot of verdant wooded parcels that are considered to exist for no reasons other than tramp camps or waiting to be clearcut and developed into strandboard mortgage-slave Revittown camps for the financial interest of distant REIT investors.
Emergency calls for "brush" fires are frequent in the Designated Tramp Camps on land both public and private, according to people who listen to the local police and fire scanners in that city/county.
Local “homeless advocates” protect their rice bowl by howling plaintively that more programs, more money, and of course more “homeless advocates” are needed.
Nobody ever suggests advocates for the “homed.” Or the wild lands and creatures.
Politicians both elected and appointed have zero incentive to do anything about the problem, since being non-PC is a far bigger sin than enabling crime and mayhem.
The gorgeous forested campus of Evergreen State outside of town has been a tramp magnet for as long as anyone can remember but increasingly so since the mid teens and especially since the TDS/BLM frenzies of 2016-17. Piles of trash and feces, toxics thrown in streams/ponds/wetlands/the Sound, fires, assaults, rapes, tortured animals nailed to trees, syringes bristling from treebark, etc., were common, but the college’s E-suite wankers just kinda slid out from under the issue.
Oh yeah, and bravely, bodice-heavingly, made it policy that lawful concealed or open carry was not allowed on the campus. So that any law abiding person venturing onto campus was defined as prey of their pet tramps and deranged lefties.
A few summers ago, only the hand of Ukko prevented on Evergreen State’s campus what an emergency team manager told me “would have been a historic, mass casualty event of national headlines.” I.e., Ukko switched off the dry hot winds that had been blowing for several days, just hours before a methie set himself, his tent, and a couple bone-dry acres on fire in the campus woods. Within hours of the knockdown and all clear, the winds came back. Terve Ukko!
I was told that it would have been much worse as it was, had the flaming-human-torch tramp not been able to stagger to the nearby emergency pillar phone that a forward-thinking white guy at the college had fought for years and despite intense administrative opposition to have installed there at the “organic farm.”
It seems that in prior years, the hippies at the "farm" had been running off-radar a biodiesel still there in the big trees, with repeated unrequested flame surpluses. That guy figured it was just a matter of time before they triggered an “accident” (inevitable outcome) of massive local consequence. He embarked on a multi-year battle to get an emergency phone pillar funded and installed near the cluster of buildings where the biodiesel still was located.
The biodiesel experiment ended, the phone remained, and fortunately was working the day that Trampy McMethHead tried to Darwinize not just himself, but hundreds of adjacent people, their homes, and countless wild creatures.
But look on the bright side--insurers are ramping up premiums massively, rubbing their hands as they do. Whether it's "climate change" or "homeless," the Usual Suspects make out like the raiders they are.
Was it the homeless encampment Chris wrote about, near Bend?
I don't know if it was that exact one, but it was A homeless encampment near Bend.
...but she cares so deeply! I'm sure she'll hire a study of the problem, pay consultants, ask for more money from the state and federal coffers, work closely with her NGOs, establish a task force of local leaders, create new, equitable policies for those minority stake-holders effected most in this situation along with the appropriate land acknowledgement of the indigenous populations who used to steward the area... and raise monumental amounts of political donations to ensure that her administration would be present for the future resolution to the issue on behalf of all.
How lucky she is to have cousins who are experts in those exact areas.......
No wonder she’s grinning then.
Bass is always grinning, like the Joker, because she knows that despite being worthless and perhaps the worst mayor Los Angeles has ever had, she will be re-elected as mayor because of the dolts and morons who live in Los Angeles. Plus the election rigging apparatus the Dems have put in place for decades.
You speak such fluent woke, impressive. You could run for office on that paragraph alone.
bsn
They should remake the film Airplane just so the "I speak jive" scene can be replaced with "I speak woke."
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NMWMBYX_tbM
It’s a bad day to stop sniffing glue!
What a classic film! It would be fun just to watch a bunch of millennial Webster’s sit through that film and cringe and come unglued.
bsn
You have precisely described all Federal, State, and Local governments. Thank you!
Rural hinterlands of Pugetopolis here. I'll sixth that.
I’m intrigued by Mayor Karen Bass’s ability to maintain a rictus grin, whatever tripe she’s espousing. She’s always in performance mode.
I thought the same. Expressions like hers have been used to good effect in horror movies and villains like the Joker in Batman. Like Kamala’s cackle (not laughter, not joy) its’ inappropriateness should trigger recoil in the human brain. I often wonder if we’re losing some ancient ability to identify threats.
I think she's just psychotic
Or maybe just delighted because everything’s going to plan …
Her grin gets happier as the tragedy and ruin intensify. I've written whole posts about her Heath Ledger as the Joker face:
https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/your-agony-and-ruin-are-a-wonderful
She´s homo erictus.
Also a few too many face lifts.
Child Performer Star Commie Camp? CPSCC? You know they love their acronyms.
Same camp for Gavin Jazzy Hands Dancing Shoulders and Kamala. What horrible childhoods of indoctrination they must have had.
She looks like the IVF/petri dish spawn of Al Franken and Don Lemon.
In 2003 I traveled to Brazil with my daughter’s soccer team. We landed in Rio and the first sight we saw after getting on the bus were the favelas on the hillsides next to the highway underpasses. I was shocked that anyone could live like that. For one obvious reason, where does the sewage go? Downhill somewhere….I thought to myself that surely this couldn’t happen anywhere in MY country. How naive I was 20 years ago.
Same here. That was also going through my mind from this post. Went to Bahia Blanca after landing in Rio. While waiting at a small airport for a connection there was a semi riot in which the glass looking out onto the tarmac was destroyed. I don't know what triggered it except the plane was late. The threat "Police" was broadcast and all the angry people suddenly sat down. The razor wire around the restaurants, the driving Russian roulette - no passing zones and stop lights are a "suggestion" and use the taxi contracted by your company or you will be robed and likely kidnapped for ransom. The site leader I worked with had recently been robbed driving home (bandits block the road but stopping at a red light is just as useful for them). Fun times. The US had been seeded, with all the imported gangs.
We had paid security and I felt safe. It was a fun trip but I'm not sure it's safe to go again.
You just summed up the entire problem in 22 words. Congratulations.
This is incredible. Are the democrat voters of LA and California part of a huge plot? Probably not, it would take much more intelligence to run such a plot. To live under the rule of the total fecklessness and stupidity of Bass, Newsom, the California Legislature, the LA county council, etc. is like being an addict. You know it is killing you, but you just can't stop until it does.
It isn't a plot, the voters really are that stupid. They are tribalists and their tribe is marked with a "D" behind the name. If you are expecting them to "come to their senses", you are a fool. And to be fair, when you find a solid red district in a solid red state, it isn't really any better.
I'm 70 y.o. and was born and raised in L.A., lived in CA most of my life. Elections there have been stolen for eons, truth is that Trump won CA in 2020 presidential election - I saw a map of states Trump won that was done by Real Clear Politics. TONS of people were on the streets in L.A. holding rallies to elect Trump, lots of them were young people. When I went to vote, I saw the cheating for myself. A couple years ago there was a recall of Gavin Gruesome and 2 people who didn't know each other but worked the polls, both said 93% of voters voted to recall him. Gruesome ignored it and stayed in office. There was nothing the voters could do about it.
California elections are decided by who can gather the most ballots, not who can sway the most voters
It’s astonishing, isn’t it? And Sepulveda basin is surrounded by very expensive real estate — these are not poor neighborhoods! There is something systemically wrong with our society where the elite are so rich, yet so self-destructive.
Historically that has often been the case. California’s rich population reminds me of the French nobles of Revolutionary days. They thought that they were protected by their wealth from everything that was crashing around them. Eventually, events caught up and destroyed them. They looked around and discovered what reality looked like. California cannot continue with this lack of the appreciation of their reality.
Kulaks!
I was thinking of the historical examples. Almost every society eventually fell victim to the hubris of the wealthy who keep passing out enough free stuff to keep the peeps quiet. When that runs out, the tumbrils will roll.
The guilt of immense wealth, especially when inherited is ingrained in our culture. Just look at the media treatment of the wealthy who don’t bow to the progressive agenda. They don’t necessarily do anything about social ills but the sure do virtue signal.
Yes. They are, it’s called the Democratic Party.
More don't vote at all - rather than choose handpicked candidates.
So true, although 81million voted for Biden. So they say.
Back in the 80s, when I was young and fit, I jogged frequently in the basin. It was a nice bit of wild space in the middle of the valley. Thousands used it daily. It was safe, and the vibe was pure exercise.
I looked at your picture and read your story. My heart aches. LA used to be one of our great cities. Dumb Ass Bass didn't start the decline; she is just managing it to its conclusion. Great writing as always, Chris, even if it makes me sad.
The experience and grief you express is shared by at least tens of millions of people, Wayne, regarding cities all over this nation. It goes largely unexpressed. Not only is the storytelling difficult, it's not welcome. Forbidden even.
This is one of the superpowers of "shock doctrine" power. Trauma creates grief. Grievers are extremely vulnerable people. So even the pettiest aspirants to political and economic power can seize it. Particularly if they punish expressions of the griefs their traumas induce.
You note that our thanatophilic society talks a lot about death...but rarely to never deals with grief. That's left for grievers to go off, like lepers, and deal with on their/our own.
Knowing how to fix problems would require one to do mean stuff, such as relocating “those affected by houselessness” and possibly exposing them to exploitation by evil capitalism in the form of jobs. Maybe solving problems acknowledges the need for law enforcement and a “carceral system”. YOU MIGHT EVEN HAVE TO (gasp!) TELL CHILDREN NO SOMETIMES. And everyone knows you can’t be mean.
They’re already being exploited by compassionate government and the social worker lackeys.
“Be nice!”
You sound like an oppressor who objects to criminals stealing less than a thousand $$ in each of their shopping sprees.
Speaking of fraud & blue state scams, also apparently doing jobs Americans won't, this was interesting on the Billion $$ Somalian run autism scam in MN : https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2025/08/a-billion-dollar-somali-autism-fraud-in.html
Somalis are one of the major factors re: the ruination of the Twin Cities.
Really?
Who brought them in?
The US government. For decades now. Didn’t you know?
Wow. Time to deport or execute. No other way.
I vote for option B
Those figures, if accurate, are mind boggling.
Reading you for these past couple of years ago and following the detailed description of the dismantling of the largest economy in the union, from which so much good for the Union and mankind generally has come from, has been very depressing. It brings to mind the old French saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same". I'm glad you have documented in detail this catastrophe, like both the Plinys did of the Roman Empire, so posterity can study how this occurred with the complete support of the majority of the citizenry, even those who had the most to lose.
Your faith in there being a posterity is touching.
An addendum: so long as there is not a nuclear exchange.
Wow Chris, how do you keep your sanity living among the lunatics in your part of the “Golden State”?
Who says I've kept my sanity?
🤔ah, I had not thought of that. I appreciate you keeping us up on what could be in store for us if Newsome runs for POTUS
By reading my stupid comments.
“They have no capacity for any other behavior.”
No, they’re engaging in deliberate ruin. They’re making a personal mint.
Karen Bass was the Commissar that ruined Chicago policing, such as it was…
The burning will continue. The crime will continue The drug use will continue. The lies about climate change and transsexualism and Islam and borders will continue. The cheating in elections will continue. The demoralization and theft of the nation's identity will continue.
Everything will continue unless and until we stop it. You get the behavior you tolerate. Trump's demonstration in D.C. with the National Guard this past two weeks shows you that you don't have to live like this. It's just a slog. The Commies never quit. The judicial branch of the Communist party is now the vanguard. They put up an illegal injunction every 30 minutes or so. They use our legal system against the country. Commies have to be removed from positions of responsibility. You can believe any stupid, destructive thing you like. You can say stupid stuff. But you can't be sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution and actively work to undermine it. You can't take Federal dollars for your university and try to destroy the country. In the real world, woke goes broke. That needs to happen in the institutional sphere as well. If you want to live in Venezuela, move to Venezuela. You can't live in the suburbs, make $500,000, have every convenience and amenity available to you because of the American system, and simultaneously trash the American system.
Half measures don't work, they just slow the rate of decay for a bit. For example - punishing the universities for violating Jewish students civil rights by fining them isn't enough. People have to be terminated from employment, enrollment, and some need to go to prison. We also can't have protection of IP if we're gonna take 300,000 Chinese foreign students a year in American universities. It's absurd. We can't have allies that undermine us continuously. Look at Turkey for example.
If you want to stop the fires, you stop the fires. If you don't want to stop the fires, they continue. It's not more complicated than that. Everybody knows what the problems are. Not everybody wants to solve the problems.
"You get the behavior you tolerate."
Felt this was well worth highlighting; such a simple truth that's been buried under a century of academia-BS.
It’s sad. Same thing (as I’m sure you know) in the parks of the San Gabriel Valley, though those aren’t under the jurisdiction of Mayor Bass. Heck, back in 1993 the Kinneloa Fire was started by a homeless guy with a fire in Eaton Canyon in Pasadena.
As I may have commented here before (I think it was in the context of personal safety in LA-area parks), it puts the well-meaning folks in the various environmental/outdoor activity groups in a bit of a pickle: they’re understandably unhappy about the trashing of these natural areas, but politically paralyzed from saying anything critical of the “unhoused.”
My wife and I were at a dinner party recently. Our hostess announced how she really liked Gavin Newsom, and hopes he runs for POTUS. All others were dumbfounded and asked, "Why?"
I am not making this up.
She said, "Because he makes fun of Trump."
How can you even discuss with such stupidity?
Thats when you laugh hard, get up, and walk out.
Just like Pacific Palisades…. It will succumb to the throws of investors.
It´s all a throe of the dice ...