You're hot. You're starving and thirsty. You've just lost everything to one of the number of wildfires sweeping through Los Angeles and you can't even call for help or let your sister in Poughkeepsie know you're OK because the cell service is down. You're about as weary and frustrated as a human being can be.
Just as you're about to give up hope, like all ye who enter Los Angeles, a small fleet of the world's ugliest truck comes into view, bearing gifts of food, drink, and internet connectivity. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk ordered his company's Cybertrucks into action, equipped with all the goodies they can carry — including SpaceX (another company he heads up) Starlink satellite internet transceivers.
Musk apologized on X for SoCal customers who won't be taking their expected Cybertruck deliveries this week, but those trucks got drafted into service.
Unbeknownst to me until I started gathering links, Tesla is also delivering Mobile Powerwall Units (MPUs) to parts of L.A. without power. Powerwalls are the giant batteries that come with Tesla solar home solar panels. The mobile versions can be loaded on trucks — fully charged, of course — to bring power wherever it's needed.
I don't even like Tesla, but what it's doing in L.A. makes that an increasingly untenable position.
So you grab a protein bar and a bottle of water, plug your phone into the MPU, and borrow Starlink's WiFi to let Little Sis in Poughkeepsie know you're all right. "Some parts of America still work," Glenn Reynolds likes to remind readers at Instapundit, and it would be shocking had it not become so routine how many of those parts are connected to Musk. But that's only a part of what I want to discuss in this column.
(I'm biting my tongue every time I want to say something about how the fictional "You" in this intro almost certainly voted for the people responsible for this mess and will probably vote for them again if my colleagues Stephen Kruiser and Kurt Schlichter are correct.)
When it comes to natural disasters, there are three steps (broadly speaking) that competent leadership takes:
- Prepare in advance to mitigate the potential effects of the disaster
- React decisively and competently to mitigate the actual effects.
- Get and stay the hell out of the way of people who would rebuild after the disaster.
California generally and Los Angeles particularly failed spectacularly on Steps 1. and 2. for reasons ingloriously detailed by my PJ Media colleagues here and here and elsewhere, so I won't bore you repeating them here.
Gov. Gavin Newsom claims that he's taken action on Step 3. but... well...
Newsom: "We've got a Marshall plan."
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) January 13, 2025
NBC: "Tell us about that Marshall plan."
Newsom: "Okay, we've got a name for a plan." https://t.co/TlrDR6xdR3
...he doesn't exactly make your heart swell with hope, does he?
Thank goodness then for private individuals with the basic competence that Newsom and Bass lack, even though a huge company like Tesla can't come anywhere close to matching the resources Washington and California can muster.
So let's go back to Tesla's relief effort.
It's said that scotch is an acquired taste and, if so, I acquired it the first time I tasted it. The same might be said about Tesla's polarizing Cybertruck, which people seem to love or hate based largely on its looks. While I appreciate that Tesla thought outside the box — waaaaay outside the box — designing Cybertruck, I still wince every time I see one.
But you know what? Cybertruck is growing on me with today's news.
Recommended: China: War in Two Years or Less
Join the conversation as a VIP Member