A Temple of Lies

The once-mighty city of Los Angeles lay in eerie silence, its skyline jagged and broken like the teeth of some long-dead giant. Vines crawled up the remains of steel and concrete towers. Cracked highways had become wildflower beds, the asphalt split by time and root. Coyotes wandered freely through what was left of Rodeo Drive. The Pacific breeze no longer carried smog, but the scent of dust, decay, and wild sage.

Where cameras once flashed and stars paraded, silence now reigned. The Walk of Fame was buried under layers of wind-blown debris, names of forgotten celebrities faded into irrelevance. Nature had reclaimed the boulevards—trees growing through shattered office windows, ivy blanketing the hollowed remains of civic centers, rats nesting in the broken shells of electric scooters that once littered the sidewalks.

It wasn’t war in the traditional sense that killed Los Angeles. It was rot from within.

Years before the collapse, the city had already been teetering—crippled by political corruption, ideological posturing, and a ruling class of self-congratulating leftwing elites more concerned with virtue signaling than governance. They promised utopia with one hand while pocketing backroom deals with the other. Their policies—meant to appear compassionate and just—only sowed chaos: lawlessness masquerading as progress, censorship in the name of tolerance, and economic sabotage labeled as equity.

When the extremists they once emboldened finally rose up and lit the match, those same leaders cowered. Their mansions burned. Their luxury getaways were overrun. The "gravy train" they rode for decades derailed at full speed, and the wreckage was total.

Ironically, it was their own creations—their own echo chambers—that devoured them. The system they thought they could exploit collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. Promises of free everything turned to shortages. Defunded departments turned to anarchy. They hollowed out the foundations of order in pursuit of ideological purity, never considering they might one day need those very structures to protect themselves.

Now, their legacies rot beneath the sun.

On the outskirts of the city, a few survivors—silent witnesses to the fall—watched nature consume what politics had broken. They saw Los Angeles not as a tragedy, but as a warning written in ash and ivy. A monument to hubris. A temple of lies, toppled by its own high priests.

The city had once claimed to lead the world. Now it served only as a cautionary tale.