Fire and smoke. Last Wednesday, America woke up to footage of Los Angeles’s once-idyllic Pacific Palisades in black and smoldering ruins, as the city began to grapple with the worst fire in its history. Almost immediately, the remaining vestiges of our de facto State press lifted their hands to the sky in despair and blamed global warming, as democratic politicians echoed the charge and demanded action (decarbonizing our entire planet) from Donald Trump (who would not be president for another two weeks). But on X, there was no hiding from the truth, and there will be no forgetting what we saw:

LA was a portrait of madness, as hundreds of thousands of people evacuated the city while suspected arsonists shuffled through the haunted hills and empty streets spreading fire, and roving gangs of looters picked apart abandoned homes. From the first deadly blaze, questions from the frontlines quickly rocketed back to social media, and spread: why were the fire hydrants running dry? Why did LA water chief Janisse Quiñones empty the Santa Ynez Reservoir? And why was she making $750,000 a year? Why was LA Mayor Karen Bass at a presidential inauguration in Ghana. Actually, why was the mayor of LA on a “diplomatic mission” to Africa at all? Why, in a city constantly on fire, did the mayor cut the fire department’s budget? And why had the state prohibited insurers from increasing rates as the risk of wildfire increased, which catalyzed a drop in coverage just before one of the worst fires in its history?

California is a one party state, so failure in California is perceived as an indictment of Democratic governance. This means wildfire discourse is pretty much toxic at the national level. Republicans are incentivized to highlight disaster in the state, Democrats are incentivized to obscure it, and nobody is incentivized to chart a course toward safety for the people of California. While inevitable, the discourse stalemate has nonetheless been frustrating.