Take Me to Your Leader
By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org
When it comes to fighting fires and rescuing people from burning buildings, DEI and woke ideologies are more than bad policy or a bad plot idea. They have now proven to be deadly.
Disasters, natural or man-made, don’t care about injustice—whether it’s perceived or not.
Around 10:20 AM, January 7, 2025, the first sign of the disaster appeared as smoke rising from the area that would later be identified as the Pacific Palisades. It was picked up by cameras operated by a UC San Diego program called “Alert California.” Roughly six minutes later, “Plane Spotter” at LAX, records billowing smoke cresting the Santa Monica Mountains north of Santa Monica. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjd966X4-MI]
The next few days, Southern California would set a record for one of the costliest fires on record.
Karissa Waddick, reporting for USA Today, writes, “In the Pacific Palisades, more than 1,200 commercial and residential structures have been destroyed, according to Cal Fire’s estimates. Another 200 homes, businesses and other structures have been damaged by the wildfires.” Later she reported that, “it [was] the most destructive fire in the history of Los Angeles,” just six days later when the fires, there and in the surrounding areas, were only partially under control. [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/13/homes-burned-los-angeles-wildfires/77669976007/]
The Eaton Canyon fire, where I once lived, claimed the most lives—16, and accounted for the loss of 1,400 homes, schools, and businesses.
The California fires have revealed an astonishing lack of preparedness, readiness, and trained personnel—enraging people there and all across the country. They are seeing just how inept the very ones they elected to govern and safeguard them from just such an avoidable disaster as this one.
Most interesting of all is how much of an influence DEI policy hires played a role in creating the perfect firestorm politically.
“Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, while out of immediate danger as the Palisades fire exploded, was posing for photos at an embassy cocktail party in Ghana, [as] pictures posted on social media show,” Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, Julia Wick, reported.
She continued, “Bass was in the West African nation as part of a Biden administration delegation to the inauguration of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, which she had attended earlier in the day. [She left] Jan. 4 as the National Weather Service intensified warnings about a coming windstorm and arrived back in Los Angeles at around 11 a.m. on Jan. 8, more than 24 hours after the fires ignited.” [https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-14/mayor-karen-bass-was-at-embassy-cocktail-party-as-palisades-fire-exploded]
Karen Bass, Mayor of Los Angeles
“…Bass has been castigated for her early absence by her former mayoral opponent Rick Caruso and others. Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor wrote, “Inexplicable decision to not come back earlier” on X, and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, who backed Bass in the 2022 mayoral race, told Puck, “If it is true that she left the country on a Saturday after the warning came out, that is a dereliction of duty.”
Absent from City Hall on Jan. 7 was Brian Williams, the senior staffer in the mayor’s office who oversaw the Fire Department.
Also, the deputy mayor of public safety, whose portfolio includes fire and police issues, has been on leave since at least last month after FBI agents searched his home, investigating a bomb threat he allegedly made against City Hall. You can’t make this stuff up.
The Babylon Bee, ran this headline on January 7: Gavin Newsom Demands Answers From Whoever’s In Charge Of California. Okay, maybe that one was made up.
Now emerging from this disaster are the interviews and online messaging from Los Angeles, California’s top firefighters. In a video defending the department’s DEI hiring practices, Deputy Chief Kristine Larson—who heads the Equity and Human Resources Bureau—addressed accusations that female firefighters aren’t strong enough to carry a man out of a burning building. She responded with this quip, “He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.” This response was in a 2019 promo clip for Fox television series, “9-1-1.” [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7235466/episodes/?ref_=tt_eps]
Larson wants everyone to know her bona fides include being the first African-American woman to be promoted to the rank of Battalion Chief. She then said, “when people’s houses are burning down, they want a firefighter to show up who looks like them.”
I’m not convinced that’s really what people care about when they’re facing death by fire or smoke inhalation.
Now compare this with the plot line and action scenes in the almost forgettable 2021 action flick, “Red One,” a Netflix movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot. Gadot, who plays a jewel thief, is shown punching out Reynolds repeatedly, then taking out “The Rock” in a martial arts fight scene.
This is the suspension of disbelief taken to a new level. Do movie makers think men like their woman that way? Do women? Does reality actually support this concept?
When it comes to fighting fires and rescuing people from burning buildings, it’s not just a bad plot line. It’s a deadly idea.
These ideas define the era we live in. Nobody is allowed to point out this is ridiculous—especially if we make the list on the cultural hegemony.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Pete Hegseth, Democrat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand hammered him with accusations in questioning. Elizabeth Warren, and others hurled invectives in interviews and pressers in the lead up to the session claiming Hegseth is unfit for Secretary of Defense.
Hegseth won’t accept the prevailing trope that women warriors are every bit as competent as men—in every way. Pay close attention Christians, it’s because his past sins can never be redeemed.
He has criticized the role of women in the military in past interviews and in his own writing. “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said, during a November appearance on “The Shawn Ryan Show.” “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.” Pick up the interview here: [https://youtu.be/DoN5ovwB8s4?t=3203] podcast.
Hegseth devoted a chapter to explaining his reasoning for why women should not serve in direct combat roles in his most recent book, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.” He writes, “Dads push us to take risks, moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”
For liberal women senators these words are appalling. To our nation’s enemies they are a worry since they see a man who is serious about the purpose of a strong military force: to kill, maim, and destroy.
America has long dominated the entire world with its military might in terms of technology, production, purpose, preparedness, and personnel. But there are signs this strength is showing fatigue.
Our enemies don’t waste their time with gender ideology, DEI, and Woke agendas.
Even now, the CCP has been developing naval warships at a pace that has already surpassed that of the US Navy. [https://www.csis.org/analysis/unpacking-chinas-naval-buildup] Read the report from US DoD: [https://media.defense.gov/2024/Dec/18/2003615417/-1/-1/0/2024-CMPR-FACT-SHEET.PDF]
Every American should seriously regard the looming threat we face. The response has to include jettisoning the ideas of pretending and instead, embracing the facts of reality.
- Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool. —Proverbs 19:1 ESV
