Postcard From Los Angeles
I mean ...
Hi friends!
It’s me, reporting live from beautiful Los Angeles, California, the global epicenter of Unhingement. The other locale in contention this week, international waters about 200 kilometers off the coast of Gaza, may have had Greta Thunberg, but over here in Cali, we’ve got Gavin Newsom, baby. And my guy Gavin has been practicing his perfect mugshot face in the mirror since Monday. Although, it now seems that they’re not actually stupid enough to arrest him and serve up what would be a years-long content opp to a man who (while still in office) hosts not one but two annoying podcasts.
Because we live in a hellscape where authoritarian maneuvers seed trending topics to people seeking TikTok virality, I keep seeing different people tell the same joke that the only thing Gavin Newsom hates more than homeless people is republicans. And you know what? It’s a pretty good joke. But don’t forget that he also hates trans athletes.
My guy Gavin is the kind of narcissist this moment needs: young (for a politician, the bar is in hell), sexy, great hair, and filled with ruthless ambition that the country sliding further into authoritarianism will impede. He’ll wine and dine you at French Laundry, love bomb you so hard you’re ready to elope, and then, all of a sudden, he’s in bed with Steve Bannon because he thinks it’ll get him closer to a presidency. But he’s also Daddy. And Daddy loves the camera, and the camera loves Daddy, and together, they can file lawsuits and really deliver a speech.
I didn’t get much done this week, unless you count a steady descent into madness as productivity, but I did have a lot of disturbing thoughts.
With the flaming chasm between what I was witnessing with my own little eyes and the “reality” being portrayed by every form of media (including the well-intentioned on social, we’ll get to that in a sec), I’m just lucky I didn’t have an aneurysm on a power walk while trying to make sense of things. Because the truth is, while the rest of the world watched Los Angeles burn to the ground for the second time this year, those of us who live outside of the few-block radius where the protests have been happening downtown were left to explain to people absorbing coverage from elsewhere that not only were we not in harm’s way, or in my case about to get deported (I guess it bears repeating that I am an extremely privileged white lady who lives and works in America legally), but that everything was, in fact, eerily calm and the need to deploy military force against our city had been fabricated.
When Daddy filed his lawsuit against the Trump administration, it read, "At no point in the past three days has there been a rebellion or an insurrection. Nor have these protests risen to the level of protests or riots that Los Angeles and other major cities have seen at points in the past, including in recent years." And I can corroborate, because I was in Los Angeles during the summer of 2020, and the Black Lives Matter protests were much bigger than this, I was at a few of them. The shop windows were boarded up in my neighborhood because they had to be, the helicopters were out, and action happened all over the city.
Images of mayhem and flames are pretty irresistible, and they’re what get clicks, but they don’t tell the whole story of what has been happening in Los Angeles this week. While the military was being deployed illegally and cops were shooting rounds of rubber bullets directly at protesters and journalists, at one point, a fucking Labubu was in the streets making her (their? its?) voice heard peacefully.
Los Angeles is a progressive city that holds a lot of weight in the collective consciousness and runs on the backs of hardworking immigrants. We will get in the streets to defend our neighbors, because that’s who ICE is targeting, and it’s pretty obvious why this city was up first for these brutal, dehumanizing raids.
I know that we are so far past logic when it comes to moments of apocalyptic crescendo and all the content that is created around them, but it would serve everyone well to think about what they’re posting and whether it’s playing into the hands of those trying to promote an imaginary crisis by sowing fear and outrage.
Like, why was I suggested this Instagram post from an account I don’t follow (3.4 million other people do, though) that’s based in New Zealand, but posting local Los Angeles news in the form of a map with no scale that, to the untrained eye, made the area under curfew in Los Angeles look massive when it’s actually only a little bigger than 1 square mile? Obviously, the comments are crazy.
Does anyone have eyes on sanity? Please let me know.
What I do have eyes on, because I’ve had the distinct honor of being directly impacted by a few apocalyptic crescendos this year, is how desperately those at a distance want to cling to panic, fear, and misinformation even when told by someone who is actually affected by whatever they’re freaking out about that it might be best to let it go.
Take a deep breath. I don’t know if it will be OK, but I do know that losing your damn mind when this new wave of resistance is only just beginning is not a great idea. Fear freezes us and makes us small, and especially now, when it feels like the walls are closing in, we need to figure out a way to stay present, expansive, and connected to our actual community. Resisting tyranny happens in the streets, but it also happens when we try not to get sucked up by an algorithmic tornado so we can maintain even a tenuous connection to “reality.”
And that’s why, on Sunday, in what I now realize was a glorious throwback to pandemic era coping, I decided to bake a banana bread in lieu of immersing myself in a screen. By Tuesday afternoon, I was insane from mainlining TikTok. But, hey, I gave it a shot!
At least my return to the algo served up a real gem: News Cycle Nosferatu getting booed when he sat his diaper down at the Kennedy Center to watch LES MISÉRABLES on Wednesday evening. Oh, you know, the musical based on the novel that is based on THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Thinking about it made my head spin, Exorcist vibes. And then I wondered if we should all just pick a character from Les Mis to embody for the revolution happening on our demented little phone screens? I’m going with Fantine because I have a substack, a modern day form of prostitution:
And, after living through the past five years, I am confident that I now have the level of torment and longing to really nail her big song — Susan Boyle, eat your heart out. Rewatching Susan just made me nostalgic for a time when Simon Cowell was the nastiest thing on reality TV and reality TV had yet to usurp American politics and American politics had yet to usurp my last two brain cells.
Public Art Installation, Downtown Los Angeles
2025, Paint and flame on Waymos
If you are ready to take your ass to the streets, there are NO KINGS protests happening all over North America tomorrow in opposition to Herr Kumquat’s nasty and expensive birthday parade. I will be at the one down the street from my apartment, even though my cousin Snacky and I agreed this morning that the branding is a bit cheugy and a bit “pussy hat,” I’m just salty that no one asked me to consult on the headwear because everyone showing up in crowns would have been a sight to see.
And if you would like to directly support the safeguard of immigrant rights here in Los Angeles, you can donate to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights or the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
Stay sane-ish, stay hydrated, and stay safe out there, my loves!
Until next time …
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™
Liz
P.S. We’ll circle back on WWIII next week.
This is definitely the most fun take on current events I’ve seen yet and it’s not even close.
"the kind of narcissist this moment needs" is so beautifully said