Reply #58: I think part of it is distrust of government [View All]

Now, since the 1960s, there has been plenty of reason to distrust government officials. I think when the Pentagon Papers were published in 1969, people learned that the government doesn't always level with them. There may be good or bad reasons, but after 1969, I noticed a big change in the relationship between the government and the governed. Ronald Reagan capped his governmental career selling distrust of the government, and his party has run with that idea ever since, culminating in the lie-fest known as the Bush administration just passed. We seem to have lost the capacity to evaluate government claims any longer, and the default, knee-jerk reaction of a substantial portion of our society is to disbelieve what the government tells you, whether that's the president, one of his mouthpieces, the governor, right down to the local constabulary. Everyone seems to be suspect, and a lot of people just don't recognize any longer that a government official may indeed have your best interest at heart.

I don't know what the individual stories of the people trapped by the California fires might be, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that some of them have a deep-seated distrust of all government, and refused to believe the warnings because of who was issuing them.