It takes a lot of resilience to look over one’s shoulder at California. We Americans are a proud people and love our country. We know we’re wildly imperfect, but we also have seen our country overcome difficulties to become a more perfect union.

California, not so much.

One glance at the formerly Golden State is a frightening embarrassment. The latest indictment of liberal leadership is the trash heap of Los Angeles. Literally. Despite the emergence of louse-borne typhus, Los Angeles can’t seem to get its act together.

TAMMY BRUCE: THE LEFT’S OBSESSION WITH IDENTITY POLITICS SINKS TO A SAD, NEW LOW

Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times reported a week ago on the obscene condition of downtown Los Angeles, “A mountain of rotting, oozing, stinking trash … stretching a good 20 yards along a skid row alley. Rats popped their heads out of the debris like they were in a game of Whac-A-Mole, then scampered for cover as a tractor with a scoop lurched toward them. … The trash problem is not confined to any one street, but this particular location on the 800 block of Ceres Avenue is surrounded by food distribution companies that sell to shoppers, vendors, stores and restaurants. I counted seven within a block, so you have to wonder — given the colonies of football-size rats — about the potential contamination of the food supply chain and the spread of disease.”

What does the city say when confronted about the slow, or nonexistent, pace of cleanup?

A “spokeswoman for the city Department of Public Works said the backlog on service calls for trash pickup around homeless encampments sits at just under 8,400 currently. … ‘If it’s a homeless encampment, it’s a lengthier process because humans are involved and we have to meet certain protocols,’ she said, including a survey of who’s there, an inventory of personal property and notice of a cleanup,” the Times reported.

That’s right. Their concern for the people who are at ground zero for emerging deadly viruses is to follow protocols involving surveys and inventories. So don’t you worry — big government is keeping itself busy, as it behaves as though it’s normal to have more than 2,000 people sleeping on trash heaps, as potential epidemics lurk.

This is the idiotic disaster brought to you by unrestrained liberal leadership as it creates problems, then births a bureaucracy that will never deal with it.

One glance at the formerly Golden State is a frightening embarrassment. The latest indictment of liberal leadership is the trash heap of Los Angeles. Literally.

In San Francisco alone, as The New York Times reported, one of every 11,600 residents is a billionaire. The state actually has a budget surplus, but as we see, money can’t cure stupid.

Which brings us to Gov. Gavin Newsom and his plan. He’s outraged, just outraged at the “national disgrace” of California’s homelessness.

The Ventura County Star reported, “Gov. Gavin Newsom called growing homelessness in California a national disgrace as he announced Tuesday that he is launching a task force to find solutions amid a housing crisis in the most populous state.”

Like Los Angeles, instead of dealing with the reality of the problem, Newsom announced the creation of a task force, the members of which will travel around the state and make recommendations. There’s only one recommendation, and they won’t like it, that will change the state’s fate: a plea to all California voters to stop electing Democrats.

Yes, there’s nothing finer in a leader than the effort to blame everyone else for the scourge of homelessness your fellow Democrats have created over the years. California’s disaster isn’t a national disgrace, it’s not even California’s disgrace; it’s the disgrace of every liberal politician in the state who has led that state into medieval crisis.

Speaking of medieval crises, Dr. Drew Pinsky, the addiction medicine specialist, told Brian Kilmeade of Fox News that a deadly epidemic could emerge in Los Angeles during the summer months.

"I live in the great state of California, the utopia that is California, which is a nightmare,’ Pinsky said. ‘I want to give you a prediction here. There will be a major infectious disease epidemic this summer in Los Angeles.’ He continued, ‘We have tens and tens of thousands of people living in tents. Horrible conditions. Sanitation. Rats have taken over the city. We’re the only city in the country, Los Angeles, without a rodent control program. We have multiple rodent-borne, flea-borne illnesses, plague, typhus. We’re gonna have louse-borne illness. If measles breaks into that population, we have tuberculosis exploding. Literally, our politicians are like Nero. It’s worse than Nero,’ Pinsky said,” Fox News reported.

But it’s different now. Every Nero has a task force.

It’s so bad in California, even The New York Times deigned to allow an opinion piece decrying the growing instability of the state.

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In “America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals,” opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote, “The basic problem is the steady collapse of livability. Across my home state, traffic and transportation is a developing-world nightmare. Child care and education seem impossible for all but the wealthiest. The problems of affordable housing and homelessness have surpassed all superlatives … the streets [are] a plague of garbage and needles and feces, and every morning brings fresh horror stories from a ‘Black Mirror’ hellscape: Homeless veterans are surviving on an economy of trash from billionaires’ mansions.”

And yet most 2020 Democratic candidates for president want you to believe that President Trump is the problem, and the Democratic policies creating the dystopian nightmare in California should be exported throughout the nation. Yeah, no.

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THIS COLUMN ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE WASHINGTON TIMES