
by Emil Guillermo
The inaugural of Donald J. Trump, a convicted felon, took place on January 20 when he promised not to be a dictator “except for Day One.”
I hope it didn’t mar your MLK Day. A day of hope and dreams.
And the dream that maybe this second term will be over soon.
I will be thinking about Dr. King, of course, but also Rodney Nickerson, the first name reported as deceased last week in the Altadena wildfires in California. The death toll is already nearing 30.
The fires have already tested our descriptive powers. Let’s stop using words like “apocalypse” or “war zone” or say the scene looks “like a bomb hit LA.”
Call it what it is, over and over. It wasn’t a war. Or a bomb. The fires were a disaster borne of climate change. The unimaginable devastation forces us all to confront what can no longer be denied.
Climate change is real, and the catastrophe is personal, claiming the lives of people like the 82-year-old Nickerson, who moved to Altadena when it was the only place Blacks and others could buy a home.
His daughter found him in his bed last week. He died holding a garden hose.
Race and class are part of the climate change tragedy. But here’s the thing about fire and smoke: They don’t discriminate.
The Santa Ana winds, clocking in at times at speeds in excess of 80 mph, have turned all of LA into a powder keg, where one spark can ignite unimaginable chaos.
Watching from afar, I’ve been transfixed by the crisis in LA. As a San Francisco native, I’m supposed to have a bit of smug superiority when it comes to Southern California. But not this week.
Instead, I’ve found myself filled with love and empathy for LA. I even found myself thinking: Take our Northern California water, LA. For now. You need it more than we do.
These fires are an unnatural tragedy that’s not supposed to happen in winter. Last year, LA faced mudslides and floods.
This winter, LA has seen a paltry 0.02 inches of rain, compared to an average of 3.46 inches.
Combine that with intense, unrelenting winds and dry conditions, and California now has a year-round fire season fueled by climate change.
Hotter summers, drier winters, and decades of poor decisions around land use and water management have turned the Golden State into a tinderbox.
It’s also a preview of what’s coming for the rest of America as global temperatures rise and devastating extreme weather events become routine.
Trump’s “Burn, Baby, Burn” Approach To Everything
At a time when visionary leadership is desperately needed, President-elect Donald Trump continues to stoke division rather than provide solutions.
Shortly after the fires began, Trump blamed it all on California Governor Gavin Newsom and the state’s water policies.
That’s Trump’s style—setting political fires with a rhetorical blow torch. But he’s the climate change denier leading the nation into a hotter, more dangerous future.
As he takes office, we can only hope for a change.
For a brief moment in recent weeks, it seemed Trump might show some sense and humility.
At the memorial service for Jimmy Carter, Trump sat quietly alongside Barack Obama and the other living presidents.
Trump acted like a church mouse while Carter was eulogized as a humane, bipartisan leader—everything Trump is not.
Carter was an environmentalist—green before his time; a champion of racial and social justice, and a soft-spoken president who sought to unite, not divide.
Same Old Trump
By week’s end, Trump was back to his old self, appearing at his New York criminal sentencing in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case.
Facing 34 felony convictions, Trump played victim, claimed his innocence, and called it all a “witch hunt.”
Judge Juan Merchan issued an “unconditional discharge,” upholding the jury’s verdict without imposing punishment, a reminder that the rule of law can hold even the most powerful accountable. Still, it left many unsatisfied.
Trump has now achieved historical shame—the first-ever convicted felon to be elected president.
And a plurality of Americans seem just fine with it.
On Inaugural Day, I could not help but think we now have a felon-in-chief.
A Nation on Fire
The parallel between LA’s literal fires and the metaphorical fires that Trump likes to set is clear.
Decades of ignoring climate change have led to California’s infernos, just as decades of ignoring systemic inequalities, racism, and resentment have fueled Trumpism.
Trump didn’t start America’s divisions, but he has certainly thrown gasoline on them. He capitalized on the anger of those who feel left behind by the system, using it to fuel his rise.
Now, with his return to the presidency, his agenda will begin to undo the Biden administration’s progress, particularly on climate change.
Meanwhile, LA continues to burn, and the nation’s faith in our democracy smolders. Half of America views Trump as a martyr, while the other half wants him in prison. The divide grows wider, leaving the country brittle and vulnerable.
It’s a wake-up moment for a country where wokeness has become a dirty word. Pay attention to all the fires—the ones in LA and the metaphorical ones set by Trump.
And we must not let the felon’s inaugural on MLK Day be self-canceling.
We must continue to stand together for the America of our dreams and be reassured by Dr. King’s belief–that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
In the meantime, like LA, our country is pock-marked by embers, waiting for the winds to create real danger.
That’s the treacherousness of our new Trump era. What’s next? Where’s the Santa Anas?
The LA wildfires are an apt metaphor for what we are about to go through as a nation.
EMIL GUILLERMO is an award-winning journalist, commentator, and storyteller, who has covered the news from Hawaii to Washington, DC, when he was host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His micro-talk show is “Emil Amok’s Takeout” on YouTube and patreon.com.
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