The New Johnstown
But no Rescue Plan
Excuse me, I realize that right now we have Israel and Iran trading deadly ordinance, ICE raids being protested in real time, and a media Hell bent on dividing us all by race, but I had a question about a recent development and I can’t seem to find an answer.
How goes the rebuilding of Los Angeles after the wildfires destroyed entire neighborhoods?
Are the foundations poured, have the studs gone up, is drywall being installed? Are they “under roof” yet? Is there a “can-do” spirit out there in the City of Angels, neighbor helping neighbor, and an Amish barn-building spirit?
What am I saying?
In Hawaii, where disaster struck a year before the Los Angeles fires, Lahaina is still just a chain-link fenced-in vacant wreck.
We’ve become sclerotic in America, but this is nothing new. Somewhere at the end of the 1960’s America face-planted, and frankly we haven’t really recovered since.
I came from an old school people that were “can do”. I grew up the youngest of six in an Irish Catholic family where you were given a raft of verbal shit from the time you could process thought, until you left the nest. Holidays were a time to skewer anyone and everyone within earshot, to point out everyone’s foibles and flaws before the largest crowd assembled, and you damn well better have some thick skin to survive a dinner table conversation, there was no room for the emotionally vulnerable. I grew up with parents who never said the words “I love you” except through every daily action and sacrifice, and a batch of aunts and uncles who felt a duty to either beat on you, or denigrate you, so that after they were gone you could survive the cruel, cruel world at large.
The men of my youth were capable of doing anything, they could build a house single handedly, fix an auto, they could handle anything and everything you could throw at them. They didn’t get rattled, they never cried, they never showed vulnerability. They never, ever let down that tough exterior. Ever.
And they didn’t complain. They didn’t whine about what we didn’t possess. If the family needed extra cash to cover a bill they scrambled up a construction job from somewhere, worked a second job all night, came home, showered, and went to their day job.
Back around 1972 a close family uncle was working for the government in building inspection when there was a massive flood in Western Pennsylvania. The Johnstown flood, displacing thousands. Creating an instant crisis. Families needed food, housing, shelter, clothing, warmth.
This uncle was part of a team sent from Baltimore to Western Pennsylvania to assist with the recovery effort. I vividly recall his calls home to us about the situation.
He claimed he was in the middle of a “cluster fuck” of incompetence and red tape. Bureaucrats more concerned with going by the books, following some rules to the “T”, and going by government mandated protocol, than actually jumping in and helping those in immediate need.
After fighting all day with government incompetence my uncle would call back home, and engage the young me in conversations about his frustrations and angst, and make some attempt to inform me about the absolutely incredible devastation he’d witnessed from the storm that had just absolutely torn up the region.
Nightly, and repeatedly, he would call, exhausted, and attempt to impress upon my young and developing mind this idea that life can change in an instant, devastation of lifestyle is just one major storm away, and that while compassion is a nice emotion jumping in and getting your hands dirty in lending some direct assistance is a far better option than offering a coffee, blanket, and pat on the hand.
Somehow, during the second week of frustration with the unwieldy system of government red tape bogging down the recovery effort in Johnstown, he met an old Navy buddy of rank, also involved in the recovery project. They bonded in the reconnect, and it turned out the old Navy friend had contacts in high places in Washington, DC.
They assembled a group of movers-and-shakers, “can-do” types like themselves, made the right phone calls, broke through the red tape, and managed to get trailers on site to house those made homeless in the event, and began to make a difference.
When my uncle returned to real life two months later, when a more normal existence had returned for the residents of Western Pennsylvania, he relayed to me that the college educated assholes who thought they were the smartest men in the room did nothing but bog down the recovery effort, and that the more rough and tumble blue collar types assigned to assist from all over the country ended up prevailing and getting something done.
Remembering that episode, those phone calls, that palpable sense of frustration on the part of my uncle, his sincere concern for those affected by the storm “Agnes” in Western Pennsylvania way back in 1972, I can’t help but apply that message to the current situation in both Lahaina, and Los Angeles.
Well educated bureaucrats are in full control in both locations. And by design, or incompetence, there is no advancement. No help for the people affected.
No new foundations poured, no homes being rebuilt, no recovery.
Bureaucrats are more solidly in charge than ever before. The “agenda” takes priority over real world assistance. The rules and regulations must be followed to the letter of the law, common sense has left the building.
And yes, some sinister opportunist are using both opportunities to foster selfish interests. To push the goal of low income housing, or to steer prime property to their donor class on the cheap, or to use these disasters for a different aim or goal than the stated purpose of repopulating the areas with original residents.
Me?
I’d rather have a dozen pick-up truck driving blue collar construction workers who dropped out of high school on those job sites than a hundred University educated government bureaucrats working on solutions.
As much as I’d like to say that we’ve recently declined as a nation to the extent we can get nothing done, I know better.
We were in decline way back in the early 1970’s when “Agnes” felled Western Pennsylvania and the response was slow and inadequate. That “can do” spirit and honed tough nature required to deal with tragedies while keeping a cool head so necessary during WWII just twenty-five years earlier than the Johnstown disaster just a memory. The Bureaucracy was already formed, incompetence and hesitancy the new default. Even back in 1972.
I have no hope that Malibu West of the PCH will ever be rebuilt. Not because they can’t, but because they won’t. Environmentalist, bureaucrats, and pure assholes like Gavin Newsom will see to it that nothing is ever built there again.
The Pacific Palisades will be ruined by those with an agenda to build low income housing where the multi-million dollar mansions used to be, and to grind the entire project to a crawl with red tape. The “we better get ours” attitude of those who have had nothing to do with Pacific Palisades forcing a new future.
Politicians will slowly and surreptitiously slide land ownership in Lahaina to donors and friends, and those displaced in the original wildfires will be left absent title, and barely compensated. No one will hear their plaintive cries here on the mainland.
And all across Los Angeles, just like those water basins during the wildfires, the people affected will be left empty and wanting.
The great hope in electing Trump was to break through the bullshit, but the blue states are too entrenched in the corruption and bureaucracy to respond.
Johnstown, Pennsylvania lives once again, we call it Lahaina, we call it Pacific Palisades.
And there are no old Navy buddies coming to their rescue. Their “can do” spirit has died. Incompetence reigns supreme.
People like Gavin Newsom are now in full control, men who couldn’t find the business end of a hammer, or drive a nail.
For those affected I’d suggest a move, to a Red State. At least get out of California, get out of Hawaii. Get onto the mainland and start to drive. When pick-up trucks outnumber cars on the highway, pull over and call a real estate agent.
Where Lahaina and Pacific Palisades are concerned, abandon hope all ye who enter.
An “Agnes” can strike at any time, you do not want to get caught in a Blue State when one does.
All those neighbors with “Duke”and “Stanford” stickers in the back window?
They can quote Shakespeare, but they sure can’t help you pour a foundation.
Shakespeare is nice, a rebuilt home is better.