So, Chile is currently participating in the grand human tradition of being surprised that fire is hot and physics is indifferent. President Gabriel Boric, the bearded poster boy for millennial progressive optimism, has emerged from the comfort of Santiago to declare a 'state of catastrophe' in the Biobío and Ñuble regions. It is a linguistic masterpiece of the redundant; as if the 18 people currently reduced to carbon and the 50,000 others fleeing for their miserable lives needed a decree from the executive branch to realize that their situation had taken a turn for the sub-optimal. A state of catastrophe is not a solution; it is a bureaucratic autopsy performed on a living patient.

Let’s analyze the theater of it all. Boric, whose political identity is built on the promise of a more organized, compassionate society, is now presiding over 8,500 hectares of scorched earth. The 'state of catastrophe' is a legal mechanism that allows the government to deploy the military—because nothing puts out a forest fire quite like a man in camo with a rifle standing near a wall of flame. It’s a pathetic, performative dance. The Right-wing opposition will undoubtedly claim the fires were started by leftist terrorists or perhaps poorly disciplined trees, while the Left will use the smoke as a backdrop for a lecture on climate justice while doing absolutely nothing to improve the infrastructure that makes these regions as flammable as a gasoline-soaked hayride. Both sides are essentially arguing over who should hold the marshmallows while the house burns down.

We are told that 50,000 people are being evacuated. Imagine that: a stadium's worth of humans, clutching their most prized plastic possessions, scurrying away from a heatwave they helped facilitate. The tragedy isn’t the fire itself; it’s the predictable, stultifying cycle of it. We spend decades turning the planet into a giant air fryer, and then we act shocked when the 'start' button finally sticks. Chile is currently sweltering under a heatwave that has turned its central regions into a kiln, and the response is a series of press conferences. Boric’s declaration is the political equivalent of trying to stop a tidal wave by shouting at it to show its ID. It provides a sense of 'action' for the evening news while the actual reality is a chaotic, desperate struggle involving firefighters who are essentially trying to spit on a dragon.

The geography of this disaster—300 miles south of the capital—is just far enough for the urban elite to feel a twinge of pity before checking their stocks, but close enough to ensure the smoke ruins the aesthetic of their brunch. The regions of Biobío and Ñuble are being gutted, their forests erased, and their homes turned into ash. And for what? So we can repeat this next year? This isn't a freak accident; it’s a scheduled event on the calendar of human collapse. The 18 dead are merely the early adopters of a lifestyle that involves being consumed by the environment we’ve spent two centuries insulting.

Boric is 'struggling' to extinguish the flames, but the real struggle is against the sheer, unadulterated stupidity of the modern state. We have money for everything except the fundamental preservation of the habitability of the terrain. We have sophisticated systems for tracking tax revenue and monitoring social media dissent, but when the trees catch fire, we revert to the primitive technology of 'running away' and 'hoping for rain.' The president’s declaration of catastrophe is an admission of bankruptcy—not financial, but intellectual. It is the white flag of a civilization that has no idea how to manage the consequences of its own existence.

In the end, the ash doesn't care about Boric’s progressivism or the Right’s market-driven fantasies. The fire is the only honest actor in this play. It doesn't pretend to have a five-year plan. It doesn't issue press releases. It simply consumes everything that is foolish enough to be in its way. While 50,000 people wait in temporary shelters for the government to tell them it’s safe to go back to their charred remnants of a life, the political class will continue to refine their 'catastrophe' rhetoric. It’s a boring, repetitive, and ultimately fatal spectacle. We are a species that has mastered the art of naming its own destruction without ever lifting a finger to stop the ignition.