The administration and its media allies paint a dystopian picture for political reasons that’s untethered from L.A.’s reality.
For most people in Los Angeles, it was a run-of-the-mill weekend. There were kids baseball and soccer games, pleasant weather for getting outdoors, and Dodgers games on TV.
On cable and local news, though, as well as X and other strident quadrants of social media, the scene was far less idyllic, playing into the dystopian narrative the Trump administration clearly wanted to advance regarding demonstrations over immigration policy. To put it the way an alliterative TV news chyron might, think “CALIFORNIA IN CHAOS,” with President Trump stoking the fire by tweeting about immigrant invasions and rampant lawlessness.
TV news and social media excel at offering snapshots of what’s happening, but not the big picture. So the images emanating from L.A. (and the outlying city of Paramount, one many Angelenos likely couldn’t find on a map) fueled the distorted scenario that Trump and his acolytes pushed, capitalizing on the fact that those information conduits and their viewers are drawn to the conflict like moths to the (literal, in this case) flames.
Granted, more sober voices tried to clarify the overall dynamic — observing that Trump’s tweets, for starters, were untethered from reality. Yet given the power of his megaphone and the legions who parrot his claims, it’s hard to sway an audience that might have never been to California, or that lacks the media literacy to grasp a few hundred people taking to the streets — in a state with 40 million residents — doesn’t translate into widespread chaos.
“Most people in L.A. probably don’t even know that this is going on,” CNN national security analyst and Harvard professor Juliette Kayyem pointed out on Saturday.
