I’ve been visiting Pasadena and San Marino for the past five weeks. And although everything could have been different—in another timeline, in a different political climate, under another administration—I can say that now, as I return to Italy (which I deeply missed during these weeks), I also, indeed, miss Los Angeles.
I want to begin by saying that I miss that place not because it’s better than Italy (or that Italy is better than Los Angeles), but because of its vibe. To borrow and twist a line from a well-known writer: "Every happy country is happy in the same bland way. But the broken ones each rot in their own beautiful, terrifying fashion."
And yes, I miss the specific rot of Los Angeles.
I arrived in San Marino on a Sunday afternoon. The next morning, I decided to walk to campus—1.8 miles of painfully beautiful houses, with perfectly trimmed lawns, colorful flowers, peacocks running wild from one yard to another (as well as a fair share of squirrels and coyotes). The feeling I got while walking along the sidewalks of these massive streets, lined with houses that epitomize the colonial "I-made-money-and-I-want-you-to-know-it" aesthetic—complete with Teslas parked outside—was strange. But what struck me as even stranger was this: not a single house had a fence. You could easily walk onto their lawns and touch that soft, perfect grass.
And yet, if you look close, there is a kind of fence. A theoretical one. The “Armed Response” sign.
If you pay attention to these picture-perfect, magazine-cover homes, you’ll notice that each one has at least a couple of signs—quietly threatening and alienating, especially for a non-local European tourist like me (yes, I was walking)—that make you wonder: but nobody asked. So why such strong statements on your front lawn?
I began to wonder if anyone else had thought the same thing, and that question stayed with me throughout the following weeks—not just because of the immigrant protests in downtown LA, not just because of ICE (and yes, I learned that the 4th and 5th Amendments are quite useful to keep in mind), not only because I saw mile after mile of sidewalk covered in tents, with far too many people clearly under the influence of various drugs. But mainly because Trump decided to bomb Tehran. And these are not opinions. These are facts. Facts that shaped my thoughts and pushed me into a quiet existential crisis about the world I live in.
Is this a mentality I want to share—the one that says, “We won’t get killed if we kill them first”? Certainly not. But that came with other thoughts as well. The first was: how do people perceive their political situation? And the answer I came to is that if you’re wealthy enough, you don’t perceive it at all. Capitalism works just fine for you, and you can buy whatever you want.
Many more questions followed, and I even began to doubt whether the US is really a democracy at all (they’re not even trying to pretend anymore—it feels more like proto-anarcho-capitalism). And then I began to wonder: should I enjoy my time there less because of the rot in the society around me?
And then something switched in my mind.
The world sucks. But you know what? This is a kind of white savior complex. (Or, almost white—because I quickly understood that Italians aren’t exactly perceived as white, either.) Let’s not be the stereotype of the stereotype of the “woke” tourist. Let’s not take the weight of the world onto our shoulders—not because it’s not our responsibility, but because we simply cannot understand it in its entirety.
So let me just report the facts. And let me enjoy the desert, thinking I survived something terrible and now live in a post-apocalyptic world.
I’m fine. And what I can do is stick to the facts. And the fact is: Los Angeles is full of stunning, absurdly rich homes with “Armed Response” signs everywhere.
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