I am an empathic Black woman, born, raised, and still living in Los Angeles. Most of my family calls Southern California home. So hearing Donald Trump speak so glibly about Iran potentially unleashing nuclear destruction on Los Angeles and San Diego—and hearing a Nebraska audience applaud—filled me with anger and absolute fucking disgust. These are not expendable cities. These are our homes, our families, our histories, and our futures. And here's the bitter irony: California ranks first in federal tax collections, contributing $766.5 billion in fiscal year 2025, while Nebraska ranks 28th at $44.2 billion. Human lives cannot be measured in tax dollars, but the economic implications are staggering. It's no secret that Spirit often moves and speaks to me through music and film. The emotions stirred by the new Carrie series—its exploration of cruelty, collective complicity, and the consequences of unchecked hostility—have now converged with my outrage over these remarks. What follows is the culmination of that reckoning. The fallout wouldn't stop at California's borders. Neither should the outrage.
There is something profoundly disturbing about hearing the names of American cities spoken in connection with nuclear destruction—and hearing applause.
Donald Trump's recent remarks about Iran and the possibility of attacks on Los Angeles and San Diego have generated controversy over what he intended to communicate. His defenders interpret the remarks as an argument for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Critics question the language itself and the audience's response. But I want to examine a question that transcends political interpretation.
What would America actually lose if Los Angeles and San Diego were destroyed in a nuclear attack? Because I suspect the answer is considerably more than some people realize.
First, Let's Talk About the Money
California is not some insignificant outpost on the western edge of America. It is one of the nation's most consequential economic engines.
In fiscal year 2025, California generated approximately $766.5 billion in federal IRS gross tax collections, representing roughly 14.4% of the national total. Let that settle. Nearly one out of every seven dollars collected by the IRS was attributed to California.
Those federal revenues help finance programs that serve Americans throughout the country: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, national defense, veterans' benefits, transportation infrastructure, agricultural programs, education, and disaster response.
The money doesn't stop at California's borders. It circulates through a national economy in which every state participates.
Nebraska, for example, generated approximately $44.2 billion in federal IRS collections during fiscal year 2025. California generated more than seventeen times that amount. That comparison is not an argument that one state's residents are more valuable than another's. Human worth cannot be measured by tax receipts. It is a reminder that the prosperity of American communities is interconnected, whether their residents acknowledge it or not. And California's economic contribution is only the beginning of this conversation.
Los Angeles and San Diego Are Not Disposable Cities
Los Angeles is a global center for entertainment, international commerce, manufacturing, technology, healthcare, education, and cultural production.
The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach form one of the country's most important international trade gateways. Goods arriving through Southern California move into warehouses, factories, businesses, and homes throughout the United States.
San Diego is equally significant, though its contributions look different. Its economy includes biotechnology, medical research, telecommunications, international trade, tourism, and an extraordinary concentration of military and defense-related operations. San Diego is home to major naval installations and military personnel whose responsibilities extend far beyond California.
Imagine the consequences of a nuclear attack that severely damaged both metropolitan regions. We would not simply lose buildings and tax revenue. We would face potentially catastrophic disruptions to shipping, transportation, healthcare, military operations, communications, research, housing, food distribution, and financial markets. The federal government would confront enormous emergency response and reconstruction costs while simultaneously losing economic activity and tax revenue. And those consequences would extend into states whose residents may never have set foot in California.
You cannot destroy a major part of the American economy and expect the rest of the country to remain untouched.
Wait ... Didn't You Say Iran's Nuclear Capabilities Were Already Destroyed?
Before we go any further, there is another matter that deserves attention. On June 21, 2025, Donald Trump announced that American military strikes had completely obliterated Iran's principal nuclear enrichment facilities. He subsequently repeated claims that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been destroyed. Yet here we are, in October 2026, hearing the possibility of nuclear attacks against Los Angeles and San Diego invoked in a presidential speech.
So which is it?
Were Iran's nuclear capabilities eliminated, or does Iran remain a potential nuclear threat to American cities? These are not interchangeable propositions, and the American people deserve something more substantial than competing declarations.
Independent reporting indicates that Iran's nuclear facilities sustained significant damage. However, questions remain about its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, surviving technical capabilities, and potential to rebuild. That distinction is consequential. Destroying facilities does not necessarily eliminate nuclear materials, scientific expertise, or the ability to reconstruct a program. But it also raises an unavoidable question about the accuracy of earlier presidential claims.
If the threat was eliminated, why are American cities still being invoked as potential nuclear targets? If the threat was not eliminated, why were Americans repeatedly told that it was?
The administration maintains that the president's remarks referred to a danger his military actions were intended to prevent. That explanation deserves examination alongside his previous statements and the available intelligence.
National security is too consequential for Americans to have to reconcile contradictory-sounding declarations without clear evidence. And Los Angeles and San Diego are not rhetorical props. They are home to millions of people whose safety deserves accurate information, credible threat assessments, and responsible public communication.
A nuclear threat is not a talking point. Neither is the claim that such a threat has been eliminated.
Now, Let's Talk About the People
Numbers have their place. But there is something deeply troubling about having to calculate the financial value of human beings before establishing that their lives matter.
Los Angeles and San Diego are home to millions of people. Black families. Latino families. Asian families. Indigenous communities. White families. Immigrants. Veterans. Teachers. Nurses. Artists. Scientists. Children. Elders. People who work, worship, raise families, care for their neighbors, pay taxes, serve their communities, and contribute to the country in ways that will never appear on a federal balance sheet.
A nuclear attack would not distinguish between political affiliations, income brackets, religions, or neighborhoods. It would not ask who voted for whom. Its effects would include mass casualties, traumatic injuries, radiation exposure, displacement, environmental contamination, and potentially decades of economic and psychological consequences.
There would be people whose bodies were never recovered. Families separated without warning. Communities erased from the landscape. And survivors would carry losses that no reconstruction appropriation could repair.
When we discuss the hypothetical destruction of American cities, we are not discussing expendable territory on a political map. We are discussing human beings whose lives are not negotiable.
And Then There Are Those "Airy-Fairy" Californians
Now I want to introduce something that will not appear in an IRS report, a Pentagon briefing, or an economic impact assessment. The spiritual contribution of California.
Yes, I said spiritual.
California has long been associated with meditation, alternative healing, holistic wellness, environmental consciousness, spiritual exploration, and unconventional approaches to human development. Some people dismiss these practices as airy-fairy nonsense.
I've heard the jokes. I've heard the condescension.
And after more than two decades of professional Reiki practice, I have a few thoughts about that.
I contend that California's community of healers, meditation practitioners, spiritual teachers, ritualists, artists, and people devoted to conscious living may be contributing something that cannot be adequately measured in dollars.
We may be helping shield this country from the full emotional and spiritual weight of the fear, hostility, grief, and division circulating through American society.
I offer that as a spiritual conviction, not a scientifically established claim that collective meditation can physically prevent war or neutralize radiation. But consider what these communities actually do.
We create spaces where people can process grief without turning it into aggression. We teach breathing practices, meditation, and grounding techniques that can support emotional regulation. We encourage reflection before reaction. We help people reconnect with their bodies, their communities, their ancestors, and their sense of purpose. We provide compassionate presence to people navigating illness, trauma, uncertainty, and profound personal loss.
Some of this work has measurable psychological and social benefits. Other aspects belong to the realm of spiritual belief and lived experience. Both deserve to be understood on their own terms.
And California is hardly alone in this work. Healers, spiritual practitioners, and community caregivers exist throughout America. But California has been an especially visible center for many of these traditions.
So when someone dismisses our supposedly airy-fairy population, I wonder whether they recognize how much unseen labor goes into helping people remain grounded in a country that increasingly seems determined to keep everyone frightened and furious.
There is a cost to chronic hostility.
There is a cost to collective despair.
There is a cost to communities that lose their capacity for compassion.
And there is value in people who devote their lives to interrupting those patterns.
Not everything that sustains a nation can be deposited into the Treasury.
The Cost That Cannot Be Recovered
An economic model can estimate lost productivity. An insurance assessment can calculate damaged property. A government can appropriate reconstruction funds. But how do we calculate the loss of a grandmother's stories? A child's unrealized future? A neighborhood's cultural memory? Generations of artistic expression that will never happen?
How do we calculate the loss of sacred spaces, community rituals, family histories, and the ordinary human relationships that make a place home? We cannot.
The destruction of Los Angeles and San Diego would not merely remove two metropolitan areas from the American landscape. It would sever relationships, histories, institutions, and cultural networks that extend across the nation and around the world. The consequences would be economic, humanitarian, environmental, cultural, psychological, and spiritual.
And no amount of political rhetoric could make those losses acceptable simply because they occurred in California.
Before You Applaud, Understand the Stakes
I am not interested in reducing this discussion to a competition over which state matters most.
Nebraska matters. California matters. Every state matters.
Nor am I suggesting that a person's value depends on how much federal income tax they pay.
Quite the opposite
The economic figures demonstrate how interconnected we are. The human consequences remind us why that interdependence matters. And the spiritual dimension invites us to consider what happens to a society when contempt becomes so ordinary that the hypothetical destruction of entire communities can become an occasion for applause.
Whatever interpretation one places on the president's remarks, the underlying scenario deserves serious consideration.
A nuclear attack on Los Angeles and San Diego would be a catastrophe for the entire United States. It would not be a California problem. It would be an American tragedy with global consequences.
And for those inclined to dismiss the meditation circles, Reiki practitioners, prayer warriors, community healers, and spiritual workers among us, consider one final possibility. Perhaps some of the people you've been taught to ridicule are among those working hardest to keep compassion, community, and emotional balance alive.
Perhaps the people sitting quietly in meditation are doing work you cannot see.
Perhaps there is more holding this country together than money, military strength, and political power.
And perhaps we should be considerably more careful about what—and whom—we are willing to sacrifice.