Capitalism builds monuments of folly. It pours rivers of money into hollow things—movies without meaning, gadgets without purpose, distractions without end. The earth is dry, but the water is spent on glittering fountains and sprawling lawns. The aqueducts crumble. The reservoirs shrink. And still, the machines hum and churn, making nothing that matters.

Democracy, too, fails. It picks leaders who cannot lead, men and women who smile for the camera but know nothing of the ground beneath their feet. They cannot read the language of the earth or the warnings in the wind. The people choose them because they are like them: soft, shallow, afraid of hard truths.

This is the cost. The hills burn, and the sky darkens. There are no Engineers, no visionaries, only bureaucrats and profiteers. They cannot stop the fires because they cannot see beyond their next election or their next quarter.

And so, Los Angeles burns. It is a city of dreams turned to smoke. The fires are the end, but also the beginning. They are a reckoning. But who will learn? The machines will keep churning. The people will keep choosing. And the fires will come again.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5662716&forum_id=2...id.#48544627)

Read this, if you can. Think, if you’re able. But don’t ask for a key to another cage.

The hills burn again, as they always will. Nothing has changed. The ash settles, and the world forgets. Water flows to the wrong places; power pools in the wrong hands. Democracy pats itself on the back for electing a new failure. Capitalism congratulates itself for producing another hollow spectacle. The ground remains dry.

The fires will return because the machine never stops. Only the fuel changes.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5662716&forum_id=2...id.#48544647)