TUCSON — I was doing fine on holiday cheer until I saw a CNBC website report on the stock market’s “Santa Clause rally.” No play on words, just a dumb misspelling that merits a minor chuckle until you step back to consider what lies behind it.

Words used carefully have never mattered more. Jews and Arabs, for instance. Nothing makes the point like Hamas’s monstrous Oct. 7 onslaught and the relentless riposte by hardline Israeli politicians who shame Judaism.

There is no “both sides.” Yet hotheads across a tinderbox world target all “Jews.” Others who don’t know a kibbutz from a kibitz blindly defend “Israel,” laying all blame on “Arabs” and “Muslims.”

Many now assume a reporter is biased simply from a name. Since the 1960s, I’ve sent dispatches from land held holy by three brand-name religions under a Rosenblum byline. These days, I need a pseudonym. Maybe Omar Moshe O’Toole.

In holiday mode, we can skip over the first 5,000 years of background. Today, inflammatory reactions risk wider war. And the American ex-president who dumped nitroglycerin on simmering embers may be back to replace the incumbent trying hard to douse the flames.

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TUCSON — We old guys grew up with a philosophizing possum named Pogo, a cartoon creature with an incisive worldview. He defined America’s woes with an immortal line: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” That used to be funny.

Liz Cheney’s alarm — “we are sleepwalking into dictatorship” — ought to galvanize America. But that was obvious from Donald Trump’s first days in office. After all his megalomaniacal scheming, brazen lies and a violent attempted coup, too many people are still snoozing.

As one top-level FBI investigator recently warned, a second Trump term with neither checks nor balances would end the rule of law in the United States. By every indication, it would also dramatically shorten the time before Earth sloughs off us hapless humans.

“Having lost sight of our objectives,” Pogo wryly put it, “we redoubled our efforts.” Just look at all the self-serving scalawags and outright morons who feckless voters have put in office. Trump is only the worst. Even if he implodes, toxic trumplets remain to poison the body politic.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stood together at Rosalynn Carter’s funeral. A single sharpshooter might have put House speaker Mike Johnson in the Oval Office, whose allegiance is to a narrow view of the New Testament, not the U.S. Constitution.

This hard look at dangers abroad is aimed at Americans not yet motivated to react, especially Zoomers, “Gen Z,” who will suffer the consequences. Pass it along to those you care about.

TUCSON – Flying from Paris bound for America, I ended up in a strange land besieged by Gulliver’s Lilliputians, smug and small-minded, who slavishly follow a mad tyrant toward a nightmare beyond even Jonathan Swift’s fertile imagination.

Is that a little over the top?

Donald Trump’s worst crime is not even among 91 indictments involving everything from fraud to a violent coup attempt. He allowed needless Covid-19 deaths – almost certainly well above 200,000 – for his own selfish purposes. American law calls that depraved-heart murder.

Yet so many sensible people do little more than wring hands – or simply tune out. Talking politics is bad form. Democrats cast about for an untested leader to replace one of the most effective presidents since World War II because he is beyond an arbitrary sell-by date.

Trump’s pandering led Putin to invade Ukraine. His support for Netanyahu’s subjugation of Palestine helped incite Hamas terror; the riposte sparks virulent global antisemitism. His assault on truth undercut faith in even reliable news media. And there is so much more.

In another term, he wants something akin to martial law to repress “vermin,” a Nazi catchword, and slashed taxes yet again for a wealthy few. Even if the 14th Amendment bars his return, the Grand Old Party he trashed ignores climate chaos, which is fast making Earth uninhabitable.

Where in the hell am I?

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DRAGUIGNAN, France — In 1982, I followed lead tanks into Lebanon and first saw Israel’s approach to Palestinian militants who dig in – and under – refugee camps, hospitals or densely populated neighborhoods: blast away at a safe distance.

Up the road, I watched jets swoop in to bomb Ain al-Hilweh, a camp of 70,000 people, mostly women, children and elders. Before long, I realized it was Israel’s standard approach to what you might call the subway conundrum.

Suppose cameras spot a terrorist cluster in Times Square Station at rush hour. Police can seal exits, lob in explosives and express regret for “unavoidable” collateral damage. To retain their old nickname — New York’s Finest — there are better ways.

Over the decades, extremists studied Israeli tactics and shaped a strategy. Hamas, oblivious to hapless victims, has a long-term plan for Gaza and the West Bank. The harder Israel hits, the more world opinion turns against it. And bitter teenagers swell terrorist ranks.

Hamas must be crippled. But while stateless militias can ignore international conventions and human decency, Israel cannot. If it does, Jews everywhere, even those who want a separate Palestinian state, are in increasing peril.

No other place evokes such deep passions in a smoldering world where truth is now a moving target. A High-Noon Armageddon between good and evil is unlikely. Instead, consider T.S. Eliot: “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”

Time remains to find a workable solution, but it is running out fast.

PARIS – Joe Biden defined the war in Gaza with a line from Yeats: “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.” He threw American might behind Israel but also declared nothing can resolve Holy Land strife unless a livable Palestine emerges from an unholy war.

He recalled a meeting with Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War, 50 years ago. Don’t worry, she told him, Jews have a secret weapon: they have no place to go. But neither do the Palestinians.

Ground truth is buried under pent-up hatreds, hidebound bias, distorted history, prostituted faux-news and manipulation. Solid reporting competes with so much well-meant but misleading speed-of-light coverage that peace seems an impossible dream.

Still, Jonathan Dekel-Chen — at 60, a warm-hearted history professor – exemplifies hope despite it all. His son Sagui hid his wife and their two young daughters, then tried to fight off Hamas killers. Now he awaits a miracle in the bowels of Gaza, a captive of zealots with nothing to lose.