Your Houses Are Burning

Welcome to the world of misplaced priorities. Nearly everywhere one looks, people are going about things the wrong way. Usually, it’s faulty thinking. Sometimes intentions are good, but people are conned into marching mindlessly, shouting slogans, and pumping fists. Often, pure hatred is the culprit.

Black Lives Matter once seemed like the most important organization on earth. Decades of racial progress were discounted or outright denied. “Systemic racism” was America’s Original Sin that refused to reform.

The principal leaders of BLM absconded with millions of dollars in donations. Much of it was spent on new homes for the movement’s founders.

Need any real estate advice? Now you know where to go.

For the past eight years, it was crucial that Donald Trump be put in jail. Federal or state penitentiaries, makes no difference. Just one that involves hard labor and no food. In civil courts, Trump was to be transformed into a pauper. A billionaire tucked away in a maximum-security lock-up, holding a tin cup.

Tens of millions of dollars were wasted on these pursuits, precious resources that could have gone to fighting actual crime. The charges against him, in various jurisdictions, were bits of magical thinking masked as legal doctrine. Only one prosecution succeeded, the one least serious in nature. On Friday he was sentenced to no prison time.

We hear a lot about America’s fascist impulses. But where, exactly, are these alt-right, neo-Nazis waiting in the wings to hijack the nation?

We hear a lot about America’s fascist impulses. But where, exactly, are these alt-right, neo-Nazis waiting in the wings to hijack the nation? The entire lot of January 6, 2021 pseudo-insurrectionists—totaling well under 1,000—are already in jail.

Meanwhile, there’s a critical mass of hard left lunatics on college campuses, in mainstream media, publishing, museums and corporations like Disney and Budweiser, imposing their woke mores on the rest of us. Censoring speech. Demanding compliance with an infinite array of progressive mandates. America has been in a cancellation culture vise-grip for the better part of a decade. And the purge continues.

Of all the nations in the world, only one should cease to exist—the Jewish one. In fact, it should never have been created. Despite the Old Testament being situated in the land around Jerusalem, all teeming with Jews, no modern-day self-determination for the Jewish people should be allowed. It is absolutely necessary for there to be 23 Arab-Muslim countries, but not a single Jewish one.

The Arab nations specialize in oil, theocracy, misogyny, homophobia and overall unfreedom—not necessarily in that order. Israel, in its very short existence, has developed scores of life-saving medications and high-tech marvels like the cell phone, GPS, the pill camera, USB flash drives, Windows Operating Systems, autonomous vehicles, the desalinization of ocean water, the blooming of deserts, solar-panel windows, and, of course, SodaStream and Wonder Woman.

Yeah, let’s end that country. What do we need them for.

Of all the actual genocides occurring in the world right now, in places like Ethiopia, Sudan and China—and unpunished past genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Turkey, Congo and Guatemala—the one that must result in legal accountability is what’s presently occurring in Gaza.

Genocides require the intent to mass murder an entire people. Israel’s clear intent is to eliminate terrorists—and terrorists, alone. Gazans are killed because Hamas places them in harm’s way as human shields, and not because they are being targeted by Israel. Genocides result in a population loss. Palestinians, however, have tripled in numbers since the “occupation” began. Israel may be great at many things, but genocide, obviously, is not one of them.

The actual genocides of the Uyghurs in China, the Tigrays in Ethiopia and Darfurians in Sudan go entirely unnoticed because the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and Amnesty International fixate on Palestinian casualties of war—re-named as victims of genocide.

Hollywood just hosted its Annual Golden Globes. Nikki Glazer, who is Jewish, joked that actor Adrian Brody, also Jewish, has now starred in two films where he portrayed a Holocaust survivor. (He received the Oscar for Best Actor in “The Pianist” in 2003. He received the same award at the Golden Globes for this year’s, “The Brutalist.”)

Back in 2003, one was allowed to be Jewish in Hollywood without it being an insult to Muslims and a microaggression for Palestinian sympathizers.

Perhaps that explains why the Holocaust went unmentioned in Brody’s acceptance speech. He vaguely referenced his ancestors, but forgot to mention who they were. In fact, neither he, nor any of the many Jews who either presented or received awards that evening, said a word, or wore a yellow pin, to call attention to the 100 Jewish and American hostages in Gaza.

Not even Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot herself, who has been Israel’s staunchest supporter in Hollywood, took a moment to remind the world of the hostages—not by wearing a pin, nor in presenting the award to Brody! Guy Pearce, however, who also appears in “The Brutalist,” knew why he was on stage: to showcase his red bloody-hands pin in honor of Hamas.

And now we come to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. It has displaced more than 150,000 people, scorched 36,000 acres of land (greater than the size of Miami), eliminated more than 10,000 homes and businesses, and killed at least 11 people. Looters are busy scavenging through evacuated homes to see what’s worth taking.

This horror should have never happened, or it should have been greatly mitigated. Tens of thousands of Angelinos received false evacuation warnings. Approximately 1,000 hydrants were empty of water. We now have come to learn that over $17 million was slashed from this year’s fire department budget. Los Angeles, apparently, was in urgent need of 62 new fire stations. The city’s population has doubled since 1960, but there were more fire stations back then.

The person hailed as L.A.’s first woman and lesbian fire chief is reportedly hanging on to her job by a thread. She will be remembered for making DEI initiatives a priority. But she shouldn’t be the fall girl. City Hall, and the state’s governor, failed miserably.

The Hollywood elite bears some blame, as well. In demonstrating their woke gravitas, A-listers watched the city implode with soft-on-crime policies and snatch-and-grab vandalism of commercial storefronts. They allowed UCLA to seethe with unchecked antisemitism, and elected officials who vowed to defund the police and fire departments—which they did, commendably.

In demonstrating their woke gravitas, A-listers watched the city implode with soft-on-crime policies and snatch-and-grab vandalism of commercial storefronts. They allowed UCLA to seethe with unchecked antisemitism, and elected officials who vowed to defund the police and fire departments—which they did, commendably.

Hollywood is not very good at taking a hard look at itself. It’s better at dressing up in evening attire and attending award shows. Celebrities always believed themselves to be immune from social ills and nature’s wrath.

But now the city’s houses are literally burning. And so many misplaced priorities are becoming painfully, and abundantly, clear.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Is Israel Fighting a Just War in Gaza?”