The blog FireDogLake has long used as a sub-hed the above line from the Bad Religion song, “Los Angeles is Burning,” which was written in response to the 2004 California fire season. There is something very post-modern about a disaster of such epic proportions already being the subject of a song and (warning: disturbing) video.

–Garance Franke-Ruta

Garance Franke-Ruta is a former senior editor at the Prospect. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She was a 2006 recipient of a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.