CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN’: The Dark, Painful American Tragedy At The Heart Of LA’s Apocalyptic Downfall

All the leaves are burning, and the sky is ash.

In the Palisades and Eaton fires, 6%  and 0% containment, as of publication. At least 10 Angelenos are dead. Thousands of homes, businesses and buildings are damaged, destroyed and burnt beyond recognition. Heaps of ashes. Heaps of tears. Lives and livelihoods lost to the blaze. A blood-red, apocalyptic skyline.

Many stories are unfolding before us as the Los Angeles wildfires continue to wreak havoc. At once, it’s a story of gross incompetence and what happens when city officials, tasked with the basics — public safety, preparedness against natural disasters, keeping critical infrastructure operating smoothly  — become possessed by a radical social ideology that promotes identity over merit. It’s a timeless tale of man versus nature, a reminder that no matter how safe and insulated we might feel in the modern world, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and blizzards can and will have their way with us. It’s all the individual stories of the victims, some of whom stayed behind, who lost just about everything in a matter of hours. (RELATED: ROOKE: The Left Loves Incompetent Women; Now LA Is Engulfed In Flames)

But it’s also a chapter in a much longer story: the tragic demise of California, once the jewel in our nation’s crown.

I love California — and always will — particularly Southern California: Los Angeles, Orange County and the comparatively small beach alcoves, such as Seal Beach and Hermosa Beach. As an East Coaster, California, in my mind, possesses an enchanting charm, a tantalizing allure. It’s the West! It’s the idea that the West Coast is the promised land. A paradise with abundant opportunity. A place to re-invent yourself among movie stars, palm trees, fast cars, beautiful beaches, mission-style mansions. People flock from all over the country to make it there. Hollywood, tech, aerospace, it’s all there for the taking. You are free from the dreary gloom and snowy winters of New England, and its uptight puritan culture, too; free from the flat, rolling farmland; free from hallowed-out towns. It’s what brought me there for four years in college. Go west, young man.

And I did, and for a few years, it lived up to the idea that made it so alluring. Driving into Los Angeles for the first time in the back of a friend’s convertible Mustang, looking to the concrete freeways above, I felt I was coasting into a paradise, the city of Angels and dreams. The beaches in Laguna and Newport were postcards.

But soon enough, as quickly as the dream world became a reality, the more time I spent exploring it, I discovered hidden tragedies, big ones and small ones.

The homelessness. I was crossing a street in downtown Los Angeles once. It might have been a Sunday. On Sundays — and most days, for that matter — the downtown financial district is a ghost town. The sidewalks are empty. It’s usually just you, whoever you’re with, and a few lonely sanitation workers picking up litter. Usually. As I crossed, an angry, strung-out homeless man sprinted from across the street and started barking in my face. Screaming profanities. Aggressive. Like I was his mortal enemy from a past when he was cognizant. And for a second, I thought he was going to attack me. I ignored him, picked up my pace, and thankfully, he stalked away, distracted by something or someone else. It was a brief interaction, but it stuck with me. Never mind the hundreds and hundreds of homeless people I saw, living in tents on the streets, in little hovels right off from the Los Angeles River, outside and inside Union Station, over those years.

The cleanliness. Los Angeles is a dirty city. Downtown, in Skid Row, you step over trash and feces and needles, much like San Francisco. Trash spills out from beneath blue tarp tents. As I was riding a public bus to a summer internship near Beverly Hills, I had to lift up my feet every time the bus turned or came to a short stop, as a puddle of urine, pooled at the center of the bus, began to trickle to every corner, coating the floor and a poor lady’s shoes. A homeless man had peed himself right there on that bus amid the commuters. That was LA public transportation. A ton of normal people going to jobs which could barely cover their cost of living, and a handful of unhinged homeless peeing and defecating and yelling at no one in particular.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 06: A person walks with carts in the rain near an encampment of unhoused people in Skid Row as a powerful long-duration atmospheric river storm, the second in less than a week, continues to impact Southern California on February 6, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Over seven inches of rain have fallen in downtown Los Angeles during the storm, half the average yearly total. The storm delivered widespread flooding, landslides and power outages while dropping heavy rain and snow across the region. Skid Row is home to thousands of people who are either experiencing homelessness on the streets or living in shelters. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The crime. For a year, I lived on the border between Orange and Santa Ana. Orange was a bustling suburb. A place for wealthy families. My school was there, at the heart of it. It had become a college town, gentrified by transplants. There was friction between the old-time, Orange County locals — the more conservative types who wore Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts and were low-key loaded from all of the real estate they purchased in the 1980s — and the college kids flooding in, causing a ruckus, partying too loud and too late, protesting Trump’s victory in 2016. Santa Ana, on the other hand, was eerie. Desolate. You don’t go out in downtown Santa Ana because in the downtown you might get caught in the crossfire of the many street gangs battling over its territory. At night, on my apartment balcony, I heard gunshots nearby. Blocks away. Across the street, even. Google would show you on Maps which gangs prowled which neighborhoods. My whole little neighborhood was one big gang territory.

The cost. Dilapidated, post-war, three-bedroom homes with a sliver of grassy backyard and some orange trees out front, once affordable decades ago, were now north of $1 million. Forget about living within five miles of the beach. Gas prices were nearing $6. Anyone who wasn’t a millionaire was getting squeezed by the costs. You want a cheeseburger? That will be $16 (this was pre-pandemic, pre-inflation). Does it come with a side of fries? No. I spent $50 on groceries per week, and it got me a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, frozen peas, five bananas, ground turkey, a couple of boxes of Spanish rice and a box of Barilla. Again, this was pre-pandemic. In 2025, $50 in California groceries will get you half of that, if that. And, of course, taxes. The highest income tax rate in the country.

I knew it then when I left in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: California was dying. It had been dying for a long time. Bureaucracy, regulation, waste. Mass migration. Gang violence. The perfect weather for the homeless and addicted. The perfect weather for the perfect firestorm. Governments that spend money on gay choirs and social justice art instead of the emergency responders. The state that once embodied the American dream, the middle class utopia where you could buy a home and raise a family in a safe neighborhood without being a multi-millionaire, had been strangled. A lot of people were responsible, namely so-called “progressives.” They took for granted what made California great — its unlimited potential. They took it for granted, squandered it and then gave up. They, literally, let it burn. It was an American tragedy.

I, too, gave up on California. Now, I love it from afar — and I prefer it that way.