Bill Maher Is Turning Purple

I was going to begin this column thusly: In the immortal words of Bill Maher.

Perhaps that is a bit much, but why not draw attention to the moment when Bill Maher, notably a comedian, was mugged by reality. Since he knows how to think, it is worthwhile to pay some attention to his thought.

The incident in question, as you can easily guess, involves the fire that consumed vast swaths of Los Angeles and their environs. For liberal Californians it was more than a wake-up call. It was a fire siren telling them to question their adherence to liberal ideology.

These true believers, inhabitants of the land of milk and honey, woke up to discover that being woke did not suffice to keep the fires under control. The fires showed no respect for their progressive policies and their love of the environment.

It was a reality check for people who believed that they had overcome reality. In political terms, the state risked turning purple. It’s happening to Bill Maher.

Maher takes up the leftist arguments that surround him in Los Angeles. Beginning here:

A lot of Democrats in this one-party state this week went right to, don’t blame politicians, you can’t do anything about the wind, which is exactly half true, the wind part. Yes, fire is a tough fight out here, and yes, global warming absolutely makes it worse. But that’s largely out of our control. What are we going to do? Pass a ballot measure to make sure [the] Chinese stop burning coal?

This is the act-of-God excuse. There’s nothing we can do about fires, so we are not at fault when they ravage our neighborhoods. And we certainly have no responsibility when the fire hydrants run dry.

The upshot is: blame anyone you want, but not me. That is, whatever you do, do not blame the political leaders who are responsible for fighting fires.

Maher continued:

Axios ran a story on how getting the water out of the hydrants in Pacific Palisades was more complicated than it seems. I’m sure it is. I’m sure it’s very complicated. That’s why I pay 13% of my income in this state every year to people who I assumed were working on things like this. When asked why so many of the hydrants in the Palisades ran out of water, Gov. Newsom (D) said, ‘The local folks are trying to figure that out.’ Yeah, you’ve got to do that before the fire. At least in the Palisades, the hydrants were still there. 300 other ones around the city are just gone, stolen for parts. One of the three reservoirs for the Palisades was offline at the one time of year when it was most needed.

Is that clear enough? Maher sees government failures in nearly all aspects of fire prevention, beginning with hydrants.

Does the mayor bear some responsibility? After all, she knew that the fire was coming and she took off on a junket to Africa:

L.A.’s Mayor, Karen Bass, the Nero of American politics, was fiddling in Ghana while the city burned and later placed the blame on eight months of negligible rain and winds that have not been seen in L.A. in at least fourteen years…Maybe look in the history books to see how our ancestors handled it back in 2011. 

Again, the issue is, who are Angelenos going to blame?

The Mayor said about cuts to the fire department’s budget, there were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation. The fire chief here had a slightly different take. She said, we are screaming to be properly funded, and yes, the budget was cut and it did impact our ability to provide service. And by the looks of all the fire engines in the boneyard out of service because we didn’t fix them, she’s right.”

Will the taxpaying citizens of that state start asking what they are getting for their taxes? Maher is asking:

California is the place that spends money and gets nothing, which is why you may have noticed when the fires broke out, no one escaped by high-speed rail. We have the highest marginal tax rate in America, higher than almost all other states, and soon, Greenland. What is included for that? Breadsticks? Because it clearly doesn’t cover fire. That’s government’s job, protect us from crime, violence, theft, fire… We just got our ass kicked by fire, something Neanderthals fought to a tie.

Primitive peoples, lacking in civilizational amenities, knew how to control the underbrush and thus to limit the damage inflicted by fire. We outsmarted ourselves, largely because we have been wasting money on nonsense. And because we believed that our supreme virtue would persuade the fires to spare us.

Naturally, we do not want to blame it on DEI, but still:

The good news is, our fire chief is a lesbian. Am I against a lesbian being chief? Of course not. Do I think a lesbian can do the job? Of course, I do. And maybe she’s the best person for the job or maybe they really wanted a lesbian in that job and she’s just the best lesbian for the job, and with essential services, that’s not good enough.

Maher concludes that progressive policies have largely contributed to the devastation:

But it’s also not wrong to associate some of the unforced errors our government made with the things normies see as hallmarks of uber-progressive politics, questionable budget priorities, high taxes that get you nothing, making everything about identity politics, virtue-signaling overseas instead of tending to the nuts and bolts at home. Cali has no shortage of safety commissions and agencies and bureaucrats and regulators, and, of course, sign language interpreters who communicate with their face. But common sense? We better get some of that back soon, because wildfires in California are like boob jobs in a strip club, inevitable, and they’re only going to get bigger.

Now, the only question remaining is how many Californians will look at the evidence and draw the right conclusion-- to turn the state purple.

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