The Palisades fire and the progressive ÜberklasseBy Todd Gregory and Erik Gregory When progressive icon and communist dictator Mao Zedong launched his so-called Great Leap Forward (and later his Cultural Revolution) in China, he was rumored to have invoked an old French saying about cracking a few eggs to make an omelet. In the ensuing madness, millions of the demographically disfavored in China were put to death, or starved from Mao-caused famines. Engulfed by progressive hysteria, many farmers were told to don a surgeon's smock as they were now surgeons, while many real surgeons were stripped of their duties and ordered to work the collectivized farms. Decades later, Anita Dunn and Ron Bloom of the progressive Obama administration, whose mission statement was to fundamentally transform America, proudly paraphrased Mao, declaring: "We believe political power comes from the barrel of a gun. We will attempt the power of persuasion but we will not hesitate to use the persuasion of power." In modern America, the closest thing to Mao's and Obama's progressive Utopia is to be found in the sad, violent, debauched state of California.
In the wake of the latest devastating wildfires in southern California, it has been asked repeatedly: How can California's voters continue to vote for the likes of DEI mayor Karen Bass, a dyed-in-the-wool racist who idolized Fidel Castro and shrugged off warnings of imminent fire danger in Los Angeles in order to go party in West Africa on the taxpayers' dime? Or Gov. Gavin Newsom, America's version of Canada's Justin Trudeau, with tiny, delicate hands and wide hips, for whom everything is a performative virtue signal to the progressive Left, and who obsesses over the amount of melanin people have in their skin and their choice of bedroom partners? Newsom and Bass think it's more important to install a woefully unqualified but outspoken lesbian as fire chief rather than promote the highest qualified applicant, whether it's a lesbian, a black or Hispanic transgender, or (gasp) a straight white male. Recall how Mao told the farmers they were now doctors, and vice versa. The death toll from the Los Angeles area fires went well into double digits, and because Newsom and Bass were well aware of the dangers for years but did nothing to prevent the catastrophe, a strong case can be made that both are legally culpable and guilty of negligent homicide. Newsom's decidedly unscientific fantasy about apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming (supposedly caused by the evils of greenhouse gases and capitalism) enables him to keep both the wildfires and the lucrative government and activist-driven climate grift alive. Thus, the delta smelt fish lives while people die in preventable, government-caused wildfires. They die because Gavin Newsom keeps flushing trillions of gallons of rainwater out to sea rather than building up and maintaining California's reservoirs to fight fires. And much of the taxpayer money supposedly allocated for firefighting infrastructure instead goes to social engineering/DEI boondoggles or disappears as untraceable graft into the bank accounts of California's well-connected, super-rich progressive elite (both in and out of government). In 2014, California voters approved Proposition 1 (the Water Bond), shelling out $7.1 billion in new taxes for new water storage infrastructure. As with California's nonexistent high-speed rail, charging stations for electric vehicles, and numerous other state projects, graft-addicted government officials and their cronies pocketed the taxpayers' money but didn't deliver on any of the pie in the sky promises. California voters remain indifferent, or rather in a permanent state of blissful disassociation, blaming droughts, wildfires, high taxes, violent crime, homelessness, and the like on supposedly heartless Republicans, who are truly a critically endangered political species in the state, with virtually no say in government. John Gage and Roy DeSoto of Hollywood Emergency! fame clearly did not come to put out these fires. What's an ultra-left-wing progressive celebrity in the destroyed Pacific Palisades to do? Karen Bass's fellow Fidel Castro admirer Steven Spielberg (who was as starstruck as any fanboy upon meeting The Maximum Leader) and actor/cabana boy Tom Hanks raise money and vote for moral monsters whose grifting and progressive policies lead inexorably to despair, destruction, and death. Reportedly, Spielberg's and Hanks's homes were thankfully spared. But why do others like Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins have to lose their homes on account of all this? Or the thousands of others who lost their precious houses and businesses, their lives permanently ripped asunder by California's DEI-obsessed Überklasse? What about the idealistic if misguided waitress in South Central LA who donated a hard-earned $50 to the Kamala Harris campaign, only to see Kamala give that money to billionaire Oprah Winfrey or other celebrities from the progressive Überklasse? Is there some cognitive dissonance for the waitress, or will she mindlessly vote for Karen Bass for mayor again, and Kamala for governor in 2026? How about the sexually confused UCLA gender studies major who can quote a quackademic like Howard Zinn or Ta-Nehisi Coates as readily as boy in the bubble Matt Damon but who, like the baizuo Damon, would never be caught dead reading Heather Mac Donald or Christopher Rufo of City Journal, or Dinesh D'Souza or Douglas Murray, assuming she/he/they/zir had ever even heard of such real and heavyweight scholars? It is both unsurprising and revealing that the wealthy progressives who lost their homes are demanding that they be allowed to rebuild without the troublesome red tape, expensive building permits, zoning, and time-consuming bureaucratic regulations they insist that the middle class and the less well off abide by. Further, these same wealthy progressives from the Überklasse, along with Gov. Newsom, Mayor Bass, Senator Adam Schiff, the sheriff's office, district attorney's office, and media made it crystal clear that looting, theft, and related criminal mischief will not be tolerated in rich, progressive neighborhoods. These are the very same paternalistic progressives who sought to decriminalize shoplifting, who cheered on the nationwide looting and arson committed by BLM in 2020, and declared that smash and grab retail robberies of up to $950 per day were "victimless" crimes unworthy of arrest or prosecution. But you'd better keep your shoplifting, looting, arson, and vandalism away from their homes. Progressives, whether rich or poor, white or black, famous or anonymous, refuse to abide ideas or acknowledge basic facts which conflict with their ideology, all the better to sidestep any troublesome cognitive dissonance that forces them to re-examine their totalizing Manichean assumptions about the world and human nature. Their refusal to face reality also explains their mania for censoring and persecuting anybody who dissents from progressive orthodoxy. Decades ago, crackpot progressive social theories like DEI, Critical Race Theory (CRT), Queer Studies, and their endless postmodern offshoots, were confined to the eccentricities of the campus, with professors outside of the STEM fields parroting academic nihilists like Michel Foucalt, Noam Chomsky, Bill Ayers, and Saul Alinsky. Unfortunately, the woke mind virus, like the COVID virus, did not stay confined to the lab or the campus. It infected all of society, but especially California, and it's getting lots of people killed, whether the proximate source is the district attorney's office, the genocide-promoting campus, the governor's mansion in Sacramento, or the mayor's office in Los Angeles. For progressive true believers, Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass might represent the apotheosis of the progressive movement. For the reality-based, they are its nadir.
The authors are brothers and previous contributors to Enter Stage Right. A shorter version of this article first appeared in American Thinker.
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