California Wildfires Part II: Trust and Rebuilding
A person is seen walking through Capital One Tower with its windows blown out in the downtown area after Hurricane Laura passed through on August 27, 2020 in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The hurricane hit with powerful winds, causing extensive damage to the city. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Defunding the firefighters, DEI hires for significant positions, and ideologically driven environmental restrictions on water projects: All these played a part in increasing the devastation of the recent California wildfires.
In my last article, I argued that these policies are the fruit of Fantasy Ideologies that enhance power accumulation for the Ruling Class. One dreadful consequence of their constant propaganda is that they have damaged the fabric of trust that any complex society needs in order to function.
The Elites have spent years moving the “equity” goalposts, with ever more elaborate demands for eliminating “systemic racism,” “homophobia,” and “transphobia.” Members of the political class have no useful skills themselves, and they have alienated the people who do. With their endless rules, regulations, and mindless requirements, and periodic scapegoating of anyone who resists them, they’ve made it nearly impossible for competent people (who do have a clue what to do) to actually get anything done.
Now that a big chunk of the most densely populated part of California has literally burned to the ground, we have to face the problem of rebuilding. I can tell you from my own experience with natural disasters that wishful thinking has no constructive role to play in this.
The people of Southern California have lost everything. They cannot solve their problems by themselves. They cannot rebuild their homes and communities using only the resources they have on hand there. Everything is gone. They will, by necessity, be counting on people from all over the country and even the world to help them by supplying materials, expertise, and labor.
A Sane Way of Dealing with Natural Disaster
We saw this firsthand in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where I live, back in 2020. The area was hit by Hurricane Laura that August, then Hurricane Delta six weeks later in October. There was a deep freeze in January 2021, and flash flood that May. Oh, and by the way, COVID lockdowns were still in place at the time.
The hurricanes were the worst. The people had no safe drinking water. No electrical power. No internet. The roads were blocked by downed power lines and trees. Even after the big things were removed, broken glass, trash, chunks of sheet metal, nails, screws and other bits of hardware littered the roads. That meant that even on a short drive, you ran the risk of running over something that would give you a flat tire. And oh yes, for the first few days, no tire shops, auto parts stores, or hardware stores were open. There were gas stations, but no electricity to to get the gas out of the pumps. Everything in your refrigerator or freezer was at risk of spoiling, unless you could get some ice for an ice chest to keep it cool.
(Oddly enough, the COVID virus evidently disappeared during that time. Nobody worried about wearing masks or washing their hands. But I digress.)
It became very clear very quickly that the people could not solve this on our own. Thousands of tree removal trucks from across the South turned up in our town. They took the big pieces of downed trees out of the streets and out of people’s yards.
After that, the utility trucks began to arrive. I cannot tell you what those trucks meant to us. I cried when I first saw the more than 23,000 of them from all over the eastern half of the country staged in the parking lot of the local Coliseum. The competence and courage and dedication they represented gave us hope. They had come to rebuild the electrical infrastructure.
Did I mention that it was men who drove those trucks? Men came from all over the US to clear the trees and restore the power. Men risked their lives climbing trees and inspecting power lines that might or might not be live. Besides these fine gentlemen who came from out of town, our local men took care of business.
A typical pattern for a family was this: evacuate to Grandma’s house in Shreveport or Houston for the duration of the storm. Mom and the kids stay there with Grandma. Dad and the older boys go back to Lake Charles to check on their home. Secure the house. Seal the windows if possible. Tarp the roof. Negotiate with the contractors. Keep the looters away.
It was the men who were there for us. It was manliness at its best. They were protecting and providing for the community, including their own families and beyond. “Toxic masculinity?” No way.
The Opposite of Toxic
The idea of “toxic masculinity” is itself toxic. It is part of the Fantasy Ideology of Feminism, which claims to speak for all women and asserts that the interests of men and women are intrinsically, always and everywhere, at odds with each other.
The Ruling Class gender ideologues and environmental fundamentalists who allowed parts of California to literally burn to the ground don’t have a clue what to do. Neither do run-of-the mill Social Justice Warriors, the Useful Idiots who reflexively vote them into office.
For too long, Elites have accumulated power by pitting Americans against each other rather than fostering cooperation among people. Too many people in power have refused to face reality rather than actually solve problems.
The Feminist Fantasy. The Environmental Fantasy. The COVID Fantasy. All of these Fantasy Ideologies helped powerful people become even more powerful. But they do not actually solve the problems those people claimed to be solving. We cannot afford these fantasies anymore.
You likely didn’t hear much about Lake Charles because people were pretty much doing what they were supposed to be doing: working together. Not complaining too much. Being grateful for what we did have.
The ordinary people of California have it in them to do that too — but only if they let go of the Fantasy Ideologies.
The Ruth Institute is a global nonprofit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love. Founder and President Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse is the author of The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village. Subscribe to the group’s newsletter and YouTube channel to get all its latest news. You can also subscribe to the Ruth Institute’s channel on Locals, the free-speech alternative to YouTube.