A C. T U. A L. L Y

Everything is happening everywhere all at once under Trump 2.0.   But what if there is a method to this madness?   ·        Systematic dismantling of the administrative state. ·        State capture of the judicial system and shakedown of big law firms. ·        Upending the world economic order with tariffs of 104% on China, 25% on the EU, but 0% on Russia. ·        Upending the international rules-based order by supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while threatening to take over Greenland, Panama, and Canada. ·        Intimidation and marginalization of news organizations critical of the Administration. ·        Book bans in public libraries and removal of exhibits in museums. ·        Erasure of historical, sports, and military figures deemed unworthy...

Everything changes, but some things are gone forever, never to be seen again.   Into that category, one would have to put the people who lost their lives and the buildings that burned to the ground in the urban wild-lands fires that ravaged Los Angeles County in early January of this year.   The Eaton Fire and the Pacific Palisades fire, together with contemporaneous fires in the Hollywood Hills and the San Fernando Valley, scorched over 50,000 acres, devoured more than 16,000 structures, and killed at least 29 people.   The loss of lives is a human tragedy, a personal one.   But the loss of iconic structures is an historical tragedy, a cultural one.   Communities razed by fire can be rebuilt, but they will never be as they were.   That is poignantly true of Altadena, a middle-class Black community established in the 1960s as a triumph over redlining, a widespread, discriminatory mortgage lending practice that froze Blacks out of housing markets. That uni...