I remember tuning into The Hills week in and week out when I was a teenager. I ate it up like catnip. That era of reality television hit my generation like crack in the 80s. I remember watching these clueless, delusional, young adults navigate life in their big coastal city and fantasizing about my own future. I never really imagined myself in LA; I think I was too much of a hipster for that in my youth. But I always imagined myself moving from Boston to New York City and working my way through the ranks in the fashion industry.
But whether you’re talking about New York or Los Angeles, I think a lot of us dreamt of building lives in these busy, bustling cities, and that whether we realized it or not, shows like The Hills subtly reinforced those dreams.
It’s not like we watched Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port and thought, “I’m going to have a life exactly like that.” They came from a world that most of us couldn’t relate to, overwhelmingly insulated from the average American’s reality.
But nevertheless, as an impressionable teenager with a brain still forming, it was easy to watch them and start imagining yourself in the Tubi version of their MTV lives.
Of course, Los Angeles and New York have never been cheap, easy or for the faint of heart in my lifetime.
In the three decades I’ve been alive, there’s never been a time where you could live in the biggest cities in the country without risk.
The crime and the filth have always been present.
But they didn’t seem to define these cities by any stretch of the imagination…until the last decade or so.
It reminds me of a Pablo Escobar quote about how he lost his fortune and control of his empire. He described it as starting off with a slow drip, and then happening all at once.
It’s not like the nation’s gems descended into chaos without warning overnight. It was a “clean needle site” here. Permitting homeless encampments there. Discouraging the policing of blatant prostitution in between. It seemed like every new piece of progressive legislation slowly chipped away at each city’s integrity, but the foundation, the soul, the heartbeat was still there.
But in 2020, it seems like we crossed a line, and couldn’t easily come back from the other side.
It seemed like the more draconian a municipality’s COVID restrictions, and the longer they lasted, the more severe and permanent the consequences were.
Decades and even centuries old institutions were destroyed for no good reason. Pillars of the community were turned to dust.
And what were once the greatest cities in the world went from slow decline to sudden demolition, hollowed out and sold for parts, reduced to mere shells of what they once were.
Of course, you could plan a weekend in LA or New York, and have a fine time — even after the pandemic, even after the wildfires, and even after Mamdani.
But the quality of life in these places has plummeted. Everything that made them special, made them iconic, and made them worth the hustle, sacrifice, and struggle they often necessitate is dead or in rapid deterioration.
And it breaks my heart — and as an American, it should break yours too.
I know a lot of conservatives find some sense of schadenfreude in what’s happened to these cities.
They say they got what they voted for, and they’re mostly right.
But as someone that loves my country deeply, I can’t help but be grieved by its collapse. Whether it’s happening in a sprawling metropolis or a sleepy small town, the grief persists.
These cities were once testaments to American excellence and the American Dream.
You could argue that both economies relied primarily on predation and degeneracy, and they’re reaping what they’ve sown. I don’t know that you’d be wrong. New York as we know it would not exist without exploitative banking, and LA as we know it wouldn’t exist without morally bankrupt media. But I like to believe that industries can be reformed and that their darker aspects don’t have to dictate what’s to come.
Even though they’ve always had their problems, you couldn’t walk the streets of either and doubt that you were in the greatest nation in the world. You couldn’t help but feel like you were in the midst of something bigger than yourself, and like life was brimming with possibility.
I’d like to feel that way again. I’d like for the American people to feel that way again.
And right now, Los Angeles has a shot at reviving that spirit in a candidate that no one saw coming.
People are skeptical for more reason than one.
Most of us — especially millennials — only know him as the villain from our tweenage trash television.
I watched a few clips of The Hills recently, and found myself hating him all over again.
Even after some of the interviews I’ve seen where he and his wife say that everything was scripted and that his bad behavior was incentivized by cash bonuses, I’m instinctively skeptical of reality tv stars that scapegoat every unflattering action to producers.
But even if he was lying, even if that’s really who he was 20 years ago, I don’t know that it would matter. It was 20 years ago, and he’s not campaigning to be anyone’s best friend or fraternity brother; he’s running for mayor of a formerly world class city rapidly descending into third world conditions on the only viable platform in the race.
One of the most mind numbing criticisms I’ve seen towards him is that he “isn’t experienced.”
A particularly grating tweet I saw said something along the lines of, “just because he’s mad his house burned down doesn’t mean he’s qualified to be mayor.”
I’ve written at length about this before, but generally speaking, years spent in office don’t make a candidate more capable of anything but corruption.
Usually, their longevity isn’t defined by what they actually accomplish on behalf of their residents, but their maneuvering amongst their peers, their loyalty to lobbyists, and their willingness to put their aspirations before the people they’re supposed to represent.
When commentators point to decades of “public service” as a reason to vote for someone, what they’re highlighting, more often than not, is a vulnerability as opposed to an asset.
And if “experience” is what led to naked, drugged out vagrants defecating in the street, what is it actually worth?
Trump was a prime example of this, and shifted the way a lot of us think about credentials.
Unfortunately, for a significant number of his voters, he’s turning out to be a massive disappointment in his second term.
And some on the right have been completely demoralized, and are preemptively bracing themselves for the same betrayal and heartbreak they felt from Trump from Spencer Pratt.
I get it. Sometimes having any hope whatsoever for America feels like a losing game.
The older I get, the more I doubt I’ll ever fully trust any politician again. No singular person — or party, or movement — is going to save us. Only Christ can do that. But God uses us all as He sees fit, and despair and cynicism aren’t going to lead anyone to Him or His plans.
I want to be clear: I’m not saying that Spencer Pratt was divinely ordained or anything close to it.
But if you want things to change for the better, you have to believe they can in the first place.
If Los Angeles of all places can be revived, I think all of America can be.
And Spencer Pratt is in a once in a generation position to start a renaissance of our once-great cities.
If you live in LA you should be voting for him, and if you live outside of it, you should be rooting for him.
What do you have to lose?
what do you think?