Get your oversized shearling coats ready, boys. Dystopia is here. If you happened to be in the Bay Area last week, you got to witness something special: a rare, meteorological phenomena that mirrored accurately the state of our world. More smoke than San Francisco has seen in any of our lifetimes rose up from the west coast’s now ubiquitous wildfires, pooled over the city, and blocked out part of the visible light spectrum — namely, the cool blues and cheery, lush greens that remind us all life is worth living. This affected a disturbing orange glow throughout the city reminiscent of just about every dystopian, desert hellscape in cinema. Bladerunner was, however, the meme of the day.

Wildfires have been raging through California since August, but while most of us have at least paid lip service to the disaster’s tragic nature, few have expressed any kind of anger. This is because, as with many facets of our crumbling state, the average Californian has internalized a sense of helplessness about the fires. There’s nothing we can do, right? Megafires — like systemic housing failures, rampant drug use, normalized public defecation, and pro-crime district attorneys — are just a fact of life. Right? But with the skies of San Francisco altered in so dramatic a way, the disasters evoked new, disturbing sentiment. It was a shocking moment, and not only for west coasters. The entire country took notice, and wondered: What the hell is going on in California? Then… shouldn’t we be doing something about this? It was fight or flight, that ancient instinct finally waking our sclerotic, apathetic generation to the potentially life-or-death question at hand. Fire. In times of crisis, people look to their leadership for direction, and in California that means Gavin Newsom. Now, does Gavin Newsom have a strategy to manage the fires? No. But does he have a PR strategy to absolve himself of all responsibility for running the state? Of course he does.