Surely you didn't mean that?

Why yes, I did. Every word.

Manure truck, Grandview, Idaho, circa 2010, but timeless and universal in terms of a representation of government competence.

Thursday's column, Believe the girls, unless it's inconvenient, and Friday’s video rant, California and Rotherham are examples of failed states, have, to my great delight, spread far and wide, striking some nerves. The most common butthurt response is along the lines of “Surely you didn’t mean that?” What they think that I surely didn’t mean was to imply that religion, and in particular, Islam, is responsible for any trouble whatsoever anywhere. After all, there’s good and bad in all religions, right?

And they are shocked, shocked to imagine that I might actually think that someone like Donald Trump could actually be more competent than the likes of Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, Kristin Crowley, and Janisse Quiñones in mitigating the fiery disaster that is right now sweeping through LA. Yep, it’s true. The bar is simply quite low.

Let’s revisit the Rotherham scandal first. As soon as the “grooming gangs” story re-emerged in headlines a few days ago, liberal apologists for British PM Keir Starmer almost immediately sprang to action in his defense. The view promulgated by Starmer supporters and widely echoed in the legacy media is that Starmer is actually a hero of this sordid mess and a victim of Elon Musk and the far right. So, according to this narrative, the British PM is as much of a victim of this affair as the thousands of young girls who were drugged, raped, tortured, and, in some cases, murdered. Yes sireee.

That, friends, is what you call a stretch. But let’s be generous. Perhaps it’s true, perhaps not. I maintain that either way it doesn’t really matter. To wit:

But even if I’m wrong and British Prime Minister-cum-victim of mean tweets, Keir Starmer, who was director of public prosecutions during the initial inquiries into the scandal between 2008 and 2013, is right about all of this being an exaggeration, it’s still not a ringing endorsement of the public officials involved. At the minimum, thousands of little girls were systematically groomed, drugged, raped, trafficked, and, in some cases, tortured and killed while authorities turned a blind eye to preserve “community relations.” - Believe the girls, unless it's inconvenient

I am confident, gentle reader, that you catch my drift. Apologists are ignoring the forest to argue about trees, and none of that matters. Even if Starmer is of sufficient moral standing to walk on water, something that seems improbable given the totality of the facts, this sorry episode is still an affront to the communities in which this scandal took place under the noses of British authorities who chose to look the other way in order to maintain “community relations.”

There’s no good way to spin this, which is why those trying are focusing on Elon Musk’s or Bari Weiss’s criticism of Starmer instead of what actually happened. It’s the magician’s trick of misdirection. My favorite hit-piece in this vein was penned by a left-leaning twit so lacking in self-awareness that he surely doesn’t comprehend that if space aliens, who might be trying to understand us by reading random shit on the Internet as they approach Earth, come across his screed, their first action upon passing through customs and converting their currency will be to subscribe to The Free Press.

Yes, I did name-check Islam as part of the problem in England. That’s because, in my view, it is part of the problem. Religious fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, don’t have to go too far to find justification in scripture for war, murder, rape, and violence because it’s all right there. It’s the moderates who, in my view, often misinterpret a lot of what scripture plainly says.

A part of Believe the girls, details what happened when thousands of Saudi and Kuwaiti students committed blatant acts of academic dishonesty and lawlessness in my community during my final years in higher education. It wasn’t pretty. And I’m all too familiar with the left’s lionization of woke douche canoes as heroes for standing up to “bigotry” under such circumstances. What I omitted (simply because every piece can’t be 5000 words) was that the Chair of the Physics Department and my boss at the time, the only person that mattered who had my back, was an observant Muslim. Neither of us gave a hoot about the mosque across the street that these students attended; it was the fact that they were lawless nimrods that mattered.

I really liked my chair, and we used to socialize and discuss religion a lot. I remember him resolutely maintaining that Islam was a peaceful religion while I pointed out passages in the Quran that indicated otherwise. I can do that all day long for any Abrahamic religion. All day long.

An aside, if you will permit it. There is a part of me that hopes that there is a heaven and hell, just like religious folks maintain, and we have the opportunity to stand in judgement for our lives. I ain’t scared. When we’re getting near the end of the ledger to the part where I didn’t believe, my answer will be because I met too many of your followers. I’m pretty sure that will ring true with any powers that be.

So yeah, Islam is part of the problem. A spade is a spade, or even less pretentiously, a fricking shovel. Call it what it is. The Brits voted for Brexit for almost the exact same reasons that Americans voted for Trump: they are sick of being finger-wagged as racist, bigoted, phobes of one type or another for objecting to behavior that’s inexcusable and illegal, no matter what cause célèbre it hails from. They are sick of being tagged as rubes by public officials who are clearly compromised, incompetent, or both. These “rubes,” incidentally, regard the legacy media defending the status quo and calling them down as almost entirely nitwits and corporate pukes. They aren’t all wrong.

The fires currently sweeping through LA are, in my view, the best current examples of institutional incompetence (a frequent topic Howlin’ rants, as you may ascertain here, here, and here) in the headines. While it’s true that there’s not much that anyone can do to stop the Santa Ana Winds, prevent the whipsaw effects of drought and heavy rains, or change the combustable composition of native vegetation, these are all known quantities. It’s the job of public officials to do what they can to mitigate things like this. That simply has not happened in California. Fires are bound to occur, but they probably don’t have to be this catastrophic. How much of this is rank incompetence, how much is fealty to ideology, and how much is due to distraction over woke bullshit is anyone’s guess. But they are all in the mix.

And, on cue, the legacy media and those defending the lunatics who run the west coast are blaming everything and everyone but the elected public officials and beauracrats who are in charge of public safety. This may be the narrative du jour in some circles, but the facts on the ground tell another story.

Consider, if you will, the fact that Janisse Quiñones, the head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who earns $750,000 a year (double what her recent predecessor earned in the same job), can’t explain why the Santa Ynez Reservoir in Pacific Palisades, the second largest in the LA basin, was offline and empty during fire season. In an obvious tell, this questionable display of judgment doesn’t phase the “it’s all climate change and Trump” set one bit. Quiñones, who says that she views her work through an equity lens, needs a new set of glasses—the kind that allows her to read the current weather reports and historical data on fire season in the LA basin.

Then there’s recently re-elected LA Mayor Karen Bass, who was on a junket in Ghana when the fires broke out. Bass, whose defenders claim could not have possibly anticipated such a disaster, needs a new set of spectacles for weather reports and historical data concerning fire season as well. Perhaps she and Quiñones can pair up to get in on a $149.95 special at America’s Best.

Then there’s the $17.6 million that Bass ordered cut from this year’s LAFD budget, that she claims wasn’t actually cut. A statement with which LAFD chief Kristin Crowley disagrees. Crowley, who herself views firefighting through the lens of DEI, seems to finally be getting the memo that firestorms burning through your city don’t give a shit about DEI. What they do respond to is water and other retardants, firelines, firefighters, planning, infrastructure, etc., none of which are visible through the lens of equity.

So yeah, I meant every word in both pieces. I know people who’ve lost their homes in LA. They are pissed. I would not be at all surprised if, in the next election cycle, these fires served as a pivotal event in swinging California away from blue supermajorities. It would sure be in line with other similar paradigm shifts—Brexit, Trump, etc.—that the media and political mullet heads didn’t see coming because they were to busy making up excuses for what is, by most ordinary people’s reckoning, inexcusable.

Nuff said. I promised the Groms a night at McDonald’s Playland. Cheers all. I wish you peace.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com