California’s biggest city is no stranger to riots but the response to Trump’s migrant arrests shows civil disorder is now integral to urban politics — and both Democrats and Republicans are out to exploit that
Somewhere in Malibu, a mortician prepares Brian Wilson for his last performance. The California of the Beach Boys is long gone. The California of Silicon Valley is going — to Texas, where Elon Musk has moved Tesla’s headquarters; to Washington, where Big Tech is now fusing with Big Government; and down into a spiral of debt, dysfunction and disorder.
California used to be the world’s blue-sky future. Now it is America’s darkening present. The scenes from downtown Los Angeles are shocking but not surprising. If, as I did, you lived in a Democratic city in a Democratic state in the decade between the advent of the Occupy movement in 2011 and the apotheosis of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, you are accustomed to rioters burning cars and throwing stones, looters ransacking the Adidas and Apple stores, and police firing tear gas. This is how American politics now works.
