I know it's always a little too easy and smug to say "this other country does a better job", especially in the midst of a disaster, but looking at how the U.S. handles disasters vs China - consistently, not just the current LA fires - is actually so illustrative of where both societies respectively stand today.

At heart, this is about all unity vs division. In China, disasters are always taken as occasions for displaying and reinforcing social cohesion: "we collectively face this issue, we'll mass mobilize to overcome it, we the people acting as one can tackle any challenge."

The 2022 Chongqing fires were a great example of this. The fires raged under conditions that were arguably even more difficult than in LA, with the fire spanning 3 kilometers in width at a high elevation with no readily available water sources or paved roads to reach the fire. The response was an extraordinary coordination between state and society: firefighting teams from multiple provinces worked alongside tens of thousands of local volunteers who formed human chains up the mountains' 60-degree slopes to pass equipment hand-by-hand. Motocross riders (with no paved roads, only motocross could reach the fire) formed supply chains up narrow mountain paths. Using tactics like controlled burning ('fighting fire with fire'), the collective efforts managed to contain the blaze in just eight days despite temperatures above 40°C (104°F).

What made the response particularly remarkable was its whole of society nature. When engineers needed to rapidly cut a 10-kilometer firebreak through dense forest to protect the mountain's core, they worked around the clock alongside volunteers who helped clear trees with chainsaws, student volunteers who passed water bottles up the slopes, and local restaurants that shut down normal operations to cook free meals for firefighters and volunteers. The state provided the command structure and professional core, but it was the spontaneous mobilization of society - from high school kids to 95-year-old villagers cooking for firefighters - that gave the response its overwhelming force. And the whole of China was cheering the efforts live on social media, sharing encouragement and shouting "come on!" ("雄起!") to the people on the ground. When the fires were finally contained, it wasn't seen as a disaster anymore but as a story of collective triumph that reinforced what "China" meant in people's mind.

The contrast with what we're witnessing in LA couldn't be starker. Rather than unifying society, the fires have become yet another battlefield in America's culture wars. The right blames DEI initiatives and female leadership in the fire department. The left points to climate change denialism or billionaires' water usage. Some of it is probably right but the end result is that a society that could be pulling together in crisis is instead tearing itself apart over competing narratives of blame, even as the fires continue to burn.

This isn't just about the LA fires - it's become a pattern in how America handles disasters, or just about any issue they collectively face nowadays. The issue isn't a lack of means - it's very much that American society as a collective has apparently ceased to exist: they all hate each other so much that the machinery of collective action has completely broken down, and even basic disaster response becomes paralyzed as everyone scrambles to fit the crisis into their preferred narrative of blame.

Some will say it was always this way: the 'united' states never was. But I don't think so. Just remember 9-11 for instance: not that long ago, Americans could still come together in crisis. Granted, the collective response that ensued was insanely destructive and actually did much to shape the divided U.S. that we see today. But at least the basic machinery of collective action still functioned - for better or worse (turned out to be very much for worse) people could still perceive a common threat, feel common purpose, and act as one society.

What's changed isn't America's political divisions - those have always existed - but rather the complete breakdown of any shared reality that could transcend those divisions even momentarily in times of crisis. All resulting in the actual work of disaster response becoming almost impossible as every decision drowns in this flood of competing blame narratives.

All in all, at the risk of stating the obvious, this all shows that American society is not only in deep trouble: it is no more. This isn't a problem that can be fixed with more funding or better technology: the issue is that the social machinery for converting those resources into collective action has broken down. And, as we're seeing with these LA fires, instead of strengthening society as it does in China, each crisis only serves to tear American society further apart. When a society reaches the point where it prefers scoring ideological points to saving the lives of its own citizens, it's ceased to function in any meaningful sense.