Nineteen Years

A child who was born on the day of the 9-11 attacks and the immediate aftermath, is a legal adult. They can do everything except buy liquor, cigarettes or handguns.

A distant relative came home from a combat deployment to Afghanistan. That is a war that was put into motion by a bunch of people who were completely ignorant of such difficult subjects as "geography" and "history".

A tad under three thousand people were killed. In response, we scrapped many of our principles as a democracy. We embraced torture. We threw away the rule of law. We destabilized much of the Middle East. We remain tied to the one nation who essentially underwrote the 9-11 attacks. We amped up the militarization of the police. We threw away most of the Fourth Amendment by legalizing "sneak-and-peek" covert searches.

All that for three thousand dead people. The administration in power kept pushing for more restrictions, more security measures, all to prevent another attack. An Orwellian federal department was spun into being. The Traffic Light of Death blinked up and down at every challenge to the administration's authority. (Also this.)

For sixty times that many dead, the current administration can't be bothered with doing much of anything, other than race-based fearmongering.

The old saying was true: A small number of deaths is a tragedy, a large number is only statistics. That is the guiding principle for the current administration.

And as far as what's going on in the West Coast right now, what you hear from Trump is: "What wildfires?" Because the fires are in blue states, he doesn't give a shit.