As a human being, I was appalled.
As an American, I was embarrassed.
As a Californian, I was alarmed.
As a citizen, I was unsurprised.
It’s apparently OK now for the President of the United States to threaten two of the most populous cities in the union, Los Angeles and San Diego. It’s even permissible to goad Iran, a nation we’re at war with, to do what he’s been wanting to do himself for years: annihilate areas that despise him.
I don’t give a damn how Donald Trump’s communications dolts try to spin it. There are no two ways of interpreting the meaning of what he said during his rally last night in Grand Island, Nebraska.
Speaking of Iran, Trump said, “They can take out a city, let ‘em take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”
Yes, that’s right. Destroying a pair of the nation’s most populous metropolitan locales and threatening the lives of millions of people is just fine with him, with MAGA, with the cheering morons present at his hateful address who responded to the idea that L.A. and San Diego might be vaporized in a cascade of nuclear detonation and fallout, confirming it as a fine idea.
It was, any way you slice it, a terroristic threat. Not a vague warning. Not a modest suggestion. Certainly not a joke. It outright encouraged an attack on a city where I happen to live.
The not-so-elusive subtext here is that this is something Trump himself would be overjoyed to see. He’d order our own military to “take out” the cities if he could get away with it. And the truth is he’s not all that far from having the power and immunity to do it.
“It’s a very small price to pay,” he insisted.
In fact, if you’re Trump, it’s no price at all. It would be cause for wild celebration.
A lot of people are already dismissing this as another, “Oh yeah, there goes Donald again. He couldn’t have meant it the way it sounded.”
But he meant it precisely that way.
Where is the condemnation? Where is the rage?
Oh sure, it’s treasonous, grounds for impeachment, unforgivable, time to invoke the 25th Amendment, blah blah blah. Spare me. We’ve heard it a million times before and nothing ever happens because insanity and incapacity are no longer seen as deal-breakers. Not when your Republican colleagues and the Supreme Court have your back to say and do whatever you want.
So evidently there’s no such thing as, “This time he’s gone too far.” Because if this ain’t too far, what possibly could be? I guess we’re all about to find out in four weeks.
Here’s the thing: I don’t think for a moment that this just accidentally slipped out of Trump’s mouth. He well understands there appears to be no significant penalty for going after California, certainly not the Southern part where Los Angeles and San Diego are located.
I’ve lived in L.A. pretty much my entire life, but it’s only over the past few decades that the rancor directed here has grown particularly ugly. My state occupies a peculiar place in the American imagination. We’re simultaneously envied, resented, admired, feared and held out as a political symbol.
Our economy is the fourth largest in the world. Our weather leaves people envious. Our state is a shorthand for Liberal America, our sun-drenched lifestyle synonymous with ease and comfort. When people from the rest of the country attack us, it’s like going after billionaires. We’re left to defend ourselves, as if enjoying our lives is somehow a character defect.
No one wants to hear about our traffic or housing problems or inflated cost of living or sky-high gasoline. That’s just the price of living in purported paradise. The fact that we’re not nearly as utopian as our reputation might suggest is irrelevant.
The nearby western states like Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Idaho, Oregon and Montana blame Californians moving to their states to escape high prices as responsible for raising their own. That, and we bring our politics with us, too – hence the bumper sticker, “Don’t California My Texas.”
Most of us who call California home have experienced some version of this denigration while traveling around the country. “Oh my God! How can you possibly live there?” I recall being asked precisely that way on multiple occasions, as if they were talking about a landfill.
I’m sick to death of the national demonization of the state in general and L.A. in particular and having to defend it. My basic thought is that this is a pretty great place to set down roots if you like city life – and a lot of how you adapt to an area is in your own attitude. Anywhere can be hell or nirvana, depending on where one’s head is at.
There are plenty of issues you encounter while living in L.A., including a healthy percentage of entitled jerks confronted on one’s daily rounds. But that’s also true nearly everywhere.
This brings us back to Trump’s reprehensible raising of the idea that perhaps Iran should strongly consider nuking Southern California. I mean, we don’t vote for him and, in fact, loathe him, so what gives us the right to continue to exist? A not insignificant percentage of the population seemingly believes the nation would be better off without us.
What it tells me is that we in the city I love have more to fear from our fellow countrymen than from any foreign power. This is not necessarily a shock at this point, but it’s frightening and deeply disturbing. This is what it’s come to in our hopelessly divided nation: a president unfathomably encouraging a nation with whom we’re at war to incinerate a few of the cities he has no use for.
And should that happen, he’d enthusiastically lend a helping hand
It’s nothing less than a call to civil war.
Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.