Los Angeles Is Fantastic. America Is Quite Possibly F-cked

The devil is in the details but so is salvation

We just spent ten days filming in Los Angeles, and I have come back with thoughts. Mostly that the U.S. is totally fucked, but there are signs of life and hope.

People have been writing about rise of The Gundo for a while now. This refers to El Segundo, Calif. and the collection of twenty-somethings who have formed start-ups there. Many of these young companies center on hardware and on defense and on aerospace, and then there’s also nuclear reactor action, geoengineering, mining, additive manufacturing and other hard-tech things happening.

The Gundo has a vibe. It’s young, testosterone-rich, patriotic and somewhat Christian. Some of this feels like theater to me, and, frankly, The Gundo receives too much attention. It’s not really the thing.

The thing is Los Angeles and its mass of interconnected cities.