Only people who have not had to rely on the government in serious life-or-death situations can genuinely believe that giving the government more money will improve their lives, Spencer Pratt argued.
Both Pratt and his neighbors who lost everything in the Palisades fire are now focused on figuring out how to try to rebuild their homes and protect them without having to wait for the woke state and local governments to fill a reservoir, clear brush, or send aid. Actor James Woods, who did not lose his whole property in the 2025 fires, had taken basic fire prevention measures that Los Angeles should have been doing. Now other former Palisades residents have had to learn the hard way. “People who believe that a solution to life's problems is giving more tax money to the government are people who actually haven't dealt with real problems,” Pratt posted on X on Sunday.
“Small example: we had to get Starlink for our property and our vehicles because after government burned down all of the Palisades and Malibu, the utility infrastructure is still so bad, you end up with complete dead zones everywhere; I couldn't manage running a campaign like that,” Pratt noted, referring to his run for Los Angeles mayor that ended with egregious Democrat cheating. “Because one industrialist built a rocket company years ago, we now have an option to directly bypass everyone else's failings while government spends the next 3 decades rebuilding.”
Unfortunately, it is also true that Starlink owner Elon Musk owes his success partly to the fact that he made corrupt deals with the Chinese Communist government so that he could benefit from much lower wages and horrible working conditions in China. That said, neither the Chinese nor the American government could have produced products like Musk's on their own.
Pratt continued, “All of my savvy neighbors who are rebuilding are investing in fire-defense sprinkler systems on their properties, aggressively managing the vegetation around their homes...they've learned that no matter how much you pay the government, they will not be there when you need them most, their incompetence will likely be the source of the emergency in the first place, and the best thing you can do is insulate yourself from their failures.”
Government officials “won't be there when the fire hits your backyard, they won't be there when the homeless drug zombie stabs you in the neck, but they certainly will be there if the IRS doesn't get their check.” Unfortunately, both state and federal governments have for many years prioritized their own power and money over anything else.
“Every smart person who has endured hardship in this country is hellbent on becoming more self-reliant, independent, and off the grid. We call that a clue,” Pratt concluded.
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As a caveat, I will say that some people have spent so much of their lives in trained helplessness and woke brainwashing that they might continue to expect government solutions even after a disaster like a hurricane. But I do think that the average American with a little common sense learns after being in a life-or-death situation that he has to rely on his own strength and the strengths of other citizens he can rally to his aid.
In fact, think of the backlash against the government and the deep state after the COVID lockdowns and the Biden administration mass illegal migration crisis. Americans might have accepted the stimulus checks and masking rules during the COVID era, but ultimately most Americans stopped trusting the government. As of 2025, strong trust in government was at just 17%, according to Pew Research. American flu vaccination rates noticeably dropped after the COVID vaccine mandate era. Democrats lost the 2024 election because of the economy and illegal immigration. None of the promises of freebies and increased government programs saved the Democrats from election defeat. It remains to be seen whether they can lie about gas prices enough in this election to fool some Americans again.