The Waymo Riots

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, politics today is 50 percent policy and 90 percent performance

A “protester” atop a vanquished Waymo in downtown Los Angeles

Greta Thunberg missed her mark over the weekend. The consummate activist/social media performer has expanded her mission beyond just saving the planet from climate catastrophe. She was on a small boat called the Madleen headed to Gaza to protest Israel’s continued pounding of Hamas (and the civilians that Hamas hides behind), while delivering a Door Dash-sized carton of humanitarian aid. She and her compatriots were turned away by Israeli forces, taken off the boat, and given some sandwiches to eat.

Greta’s actual calling was several thousand miles to the west in Los Angeles, where the city’s clean skies were under assault by carbon dioxide, hydrogen fluoride and other noxious gases. The Waymo riots were in full gear.

In La La Land, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets over the weekend to protest ICE roundups of undocumented immigrants and Trump’s master plan of mass deportations. Legitimate grievance, first amendment, no problem.

But you know what they say — go big or go home. Like Spinal Tap’s volume control that went up to 11, some demonstrators decided to crank it up. They attacked police with rocks, pelted patrol cars with concrete blocks, shut down Highway 101, and then got the bright idea to call up Waymos — the driverless Jaguar SUV taxis that roam the streets of San Francisco and LA — and ambush them when they arrived.

About a million dollars worth of the gleaming beacons of the future were set on fire and destroyed.

Here’s what’s happens when you set fire to a car powered by lithium batteries, according to Scientific American:

Why did the fires cause such obliteration? The answer starts with the battery. Each I-Pace can carry roughly 90 kilowatt-hours of stored chemical energy, comparable to about 170 pounds (77 kilograms) of TNT. That energy is distributed across hundreds of lithium-ion pouch cells, which are sealed in flammable electrolyte and separated by polymer films as thin as snack-bag plastic. When any one cell is punctured or overheated—or set aflame with an incendiary device—chemical reactions generate more heat than the cell can shed, and neighboring cells follow in a chain reaction. This positive-feedback loop is called “thermal runaway.” According to a 2024 study in the Journal of Power Sources, as the battery burns, its temperature can soar past 1,000 degrees Celsius.

When they burn, those driverless incendiary devices are very, very dirty. Besides carbon dioxide and other noxious gases, the robo-fires emit hydrogen fluoride, a toxic, lung-searing gas. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that exposure to 170 ppm for 10 minutes can be deadly. Measurements taken near electric-vehicle fires show peaks of 150 to 450 ppm, with levels during much of the fire hovering around 50 ppm.

Greta should have been there — environment first, Gaza second. Plus, it was better optics, which Greta knows a thing or two about.

The plight of the Madleen was buried in the weekend news, while the story in LA was ascendant. The dramatic scenes of violence and destruction played over and over on screens everywhere. For a performer like Greta, it was a missed opportunity, like wasting time on the slots when some red-hot player at roulette is making the whole table richer.

And make no mistake. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, the demonstrations in Los Angeles — as well as Greta’s nautical jaunt to Gaza — were 50 percent legitimate grievance and 90 percent performance.

When Israel turned the Madleen away from its Gaza destination, it took to social media to brand it a “selfie yacht,” much like Jeff Bezos turned the New Shepard into a selfie rocket for his wife and her girlfriends.

Israel — serious, fierce and in the middle of a horrific war — would have none of it.

“This wasn’t humanitarian aid. It’s Instagram activism,” Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said. “Meanwhile, Israel has delivered over 1,200 truckloads in the last two weeks. So who’s really feeding Gaza and who’s really feeding their own ego? Greta was not bringing aid, she was bringing herself.”

From Gaza to LA to Washington, performance is everything. At the Waymo riots, more people were holding up their phones than those holding up protest signs.

The master performer, our sitting president, pounced at the opportunity. Like a good show runner gearing up the plot, he called in the National Guard. Then the Marines. Trump loves a good drama, and he’s got one.

Supporting players, like Gov. Gavin Newsom, read their lines perfectly. Channeling Jimmy Cagney in “White Heat” (“Come and get me copper”), Newsom dared border cop Tom Homan to arrest him. “So Tom, arrest me, let’s go,” he said in a clip that went viral. A couple of months ago, Newsom was chumming around with MAGA acolytes Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon on his podcast; now he’s the prince of resistance. Poor Gavin; he can’t make up his mind which show he wants to star in.

But ideological consistency isn’t the point — screen time is. In Trump’s never-ending reality show (“Apprentice II: The White House”), the Waymo Riots are a dramatic new plot line, instantly drawing millions of viewers. Newsom understands this and rushed to the cameras faster than Chuck Schumer. Greta, meanwhile, was stuck in the Mediterranean.

There are serious legal, policy and humanitarian issues at play, of course. The immigration issue is complex and emotional, and the Trump administration has overplayed its hand at times. But Democrats have to understand they are alienating a vast core of the American public if they don’t vigorously condemn street violence, property destruction, graffiti gangsters, and skateboard-toting vandals. Otherwise, they’re simply falling into Trump’s plot, hook, line and sinker.

And in the realm of optics and performance, Trump is a master. He’s got decades of experience performing in front of gullible bankers, on Page Six of the New York Post and, of course, across 15 seasons of “The Apprentice.” In Justin Wells’ remarkable new documentary “The Art of the Surge,” where he burrowed inside Trump’s 2024 campaign like a termite, Trump’s command of mixing politics and performance is on full display.

Politics has always relied on performance, from FDR’s fireside chats to Hitler’s choreographed Nuremberg rallies. Contemporary performance is of another kind — spontaneous, visceral, confrontational, driven by the hungry maw of social media. The Waymo Riots served their purpose, occupying our screens for 48 hours or more. Now we’re on to the next episode.