Mike Davis's Pros and Cons of Los Angeles, and a Concise Assessment of Trump's Legacy

 #Micah Vetricht, " Amid the Wildfires," The Nation, 2.22 - 3.1.2021. - "Marx argued that the organized working class could be the 'gravedigger' of the bourgeoise, ushering in a new and better world." In Mike Davis's book, 'City of Quartz', he described the pressure-cooker atmosphere of extreme racial and economic inequality in Los Angeles, and was released just before the beating of Rodney King triggered riots. "In 'Planet of Slums,' Davis examined the 'frightening consequences of this ever-growing population, which had been shunted into massive urban slums, whose basic structure and economic development were nowhere to be found -- over 1 billion people treated as surplus population in their miserable urbanized holding zones.'  'Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, Davis wrote, 'much of the twenty-first-century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay.' " 

"Davis quoted the influential researcher Robert Webster, who said in 2003: 'If a pandemic happened today, hospital facilities would be overwhelmed and understaffed, because many medical personnel would be afflicted with the disease. Vaccine production would be slow... Critical community services would be immobilized.' "

"But in 'Old Gods', Davis is not ready to throw in the towel quite yet. He insists that 'workers still hold the keys to change the world. They have been demoted in agency, not fired from history. Machinists, nurses, truck drivers, and school teachers remain the organized social base defending the historical legacy of labor.' " Davis adds that 'Urban growth can preserve open space and vital natural systems, while creating environmental economies of scale in transportation and residential construction.' "

In his book, 'Old Gods', Mike Davis conveys a very harsh assessment of the Los Angeles Police Department. "The LAPD is constantly cracking skulls, or worse." Davis makes Police Chief William Parker a central villain of the Watts uprising, describing his approach to fighting the neighborhood's Black residents as 'very much like fighting the Viet Cong; the racist brutality of his officers and the National Guard -- who wantonly sprayed shotgun blasts and high-caliber machine gun fire during the uprising.' Davis's overall assessment is that: "Police impurity has remained rife, while inequality continues to expand and military-grade hardware finds its way into cops' hands." 

#Arthur Levy, letter writer in The Nation, 2.22 - 3.1.2021, makes the concise assessment of the legacy of President Trump: "Trump sponsored huge tax cuts for the rich, attempted to gut the Affordable Care Act, denied the existence of climate change, appointed three very conservative Supreme Court justices, savagely disparaged the Black Lives Matter movement, and brought white supremacy back into the political mainstream."

ADDENDUMS:

*"The Smell Test," The New Yorker, March 11, 2021. - "Dogs can be trained to sniff out just about anything: bedbugs and black-footed ferrets, firearms, peroxides-based explosives, gourmet fungi, toxic mold, marijuana, malaria, ovarian cancer, even contraband cell phones and child pornography."

*Zach Halfand, "Vaccine Yenta," The New Yorker, March 11, 2021. - "There are too many Web sites to check, and not enough people answering phones. Portals crash, confirmed appointments vanish. Shots go not to the most at risk but to the most techsavvy."