Fuck that guy, whoever did that. Also, yes this is a basic “society falling down” post, but i have a thought:

People are not only desperate, they’re feeling hopeless. In LA, in places all over. It’s not about drugs (though they accelerate it), it’s not about people being against the system, it’s about compounding failures of our society. It’s about the price of stable housing being so high that ever increasing amount of people can’t afford it. It’s about services that allow people to stay alive being concentrated, rare, and underfunded. It’s about society using prison to hide the poor people.

By all means, arrest that guy. There’s a lot of people who are utterly lost and are last rehabilitation. But sincerely, millions who suffer daily dehumanization so that the middle class and higher can live without thought of them exist, and the entirety of society seems set up to ensure that people in the HN demographic never have to face the excesses of they don’t want to. That someone who says we’re a meritocratic society isn’t laughed out of the room is the saddest part to me, because they’re so insulated from the front of the machine of society mowing down people.

The chainsawer is a MAGA type who spent the weeks before he cut down the trees shouting racist and white-nationalist slogans at people in the downtown and neighboring areas. Last year he was wearing a MAGA cap and proudly bragging about how his buddy Trump was going to appoint him to a really important position. (Yes, he's mentally ill, too. But he's not severely ill.)

So, not really a sign of decline so much as it is a sign that MAGA types feel the need to physically vandalize liberal cities.

So now you know why tall wrought iron tree guards are a thing in older cities.

If it's run like contemporary Russian ops in Europe, there's real estate developers paying anonymously (cryptocurrency duh) for these attacks. Degrade and replace.