As California erupted in flames and chaos during the most-recent wildfires, the city’s so-called leadership was nowhere to be found. Mayor Karen Bass was off in Ghana on an apparent taxpayer-funded junket, while her deputy mayor was facing a decade in prison for fabricating a bomb threat.
Flash forward to today, and while cars are torched, rocks thrown, and police are told to stand down, the state’s elites retreat to their luxury compounds. The poor and middle class, especially working-class Hispanics and multi-racial communities, are left to fend for themselves in the wreckage of “progressive” policies.
Governor Gavin Newsom has even had the gall to call law enforcement “cruel” recently for trying to restore order. Now, let that sink in for a moment.
What we are witnessing is not compassion—it is class warfare dressed in the costume of virtue. The Bay Area billionaire class sets fire to California’s systems, then escapes to Napa, Malibu, or Brentwood, insulated from the fallout from it. Their policies destroy opportunity, security, and basic services for working families, all while they pretend it is about “justice.”
Let’s call it what it is: Abandonment.
Bass encouraged demonstrators even as riots turned violent. Police didn’t respond for hours. Why? Because political careers come first, you know. The fire chief who dared to criticize city leadership was swiftly silenced. This is the state of governance in California—a regime more concerned with protecting its political image than its own people. And the hypocrisy doesn’t end there.
While Newsom sheds crocodile tears over “cruelty,” he presides over a state with the highest gas taxes, power bills, and income taxes in the nation—while roads crumble, schools fail, and power grids collapse. Recent reports say one-in-four Californians cannot afford their electricity bill. Many cannot afford gas to get to work. And now, homeowners cannot even insure their properties — all thanks to policies that made wildfires worse and rebuilding nearly impossible.
Illegal immigration? Not a word from Newsom as millions poured in back under Biden. Communities—especially Hispanic ones—bear the burden, from overloaded ERs to schools stretched beyond their limits. The middle-class flees by the thousands. But Newsom? He is still aiming for the White House, propped up by the same coastal oligarchs who created this whole mess.
From Pelosi’s Napa estate to Kamala Harris’ Brentwood mansion, the architects of California’s decline remain untouched by the destruction they have caused. Their policies have hollowed out the heart of the state — and now, they dare to accuse those trying to restore law and order of being “cruel.”
Cruelty is not enforcing the law; cruelty is watching your community burn while your leaders sip wine, even on another continent, for that matter. Cruelty is telling a single mother she cannot clear brush on her hillside, then blaming climate change when her home goes up in flames. Cruelty is taxing families into poverty while patting yourself on the back for your supposed “values.”
California’s ruling class has made its priorities clear—and working families are clearly not on that list.