I saw a video of fireworks over LA from the window of a descending airplane in the last several years and it was pretty beautiful. They were everywhere.

I genuinely don't understand how this has never been a news headline throughout my entire life until now. We have closed air-spaces. We know when fireworks will be deployed. The article didn't specify any reason this would be different, but I would think there is a reasonable explanation. Maybe this happens all the time and I just haven't noticed.

There's nothing libertarian about Cali... you're thinking of New Hampshire.

Cali is fairly split between all shades of the socio-political spectrum (big difference bewteen Central valley and the coast, for example).

Greed and cultural narcissism is what you are seeing. It's a "gold rush" culture. It's been that way for a very long time.