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Remember Charles Rothenberg?

Hopefully not, as it’s a most unpleasant memory.

In the early 1980s, Rothenberg was locked in a bitter custody dispute with his wife, Marie, over their 6-year-old son David.

Charles and Marie lived in New York. Rothenberg had visitation rights, but he was convinced that his ex was trying to curb them.

In March 1983, during one of his visitations, Charles took David to California without Marie’s consent. The two had a furious phone conversation, she from her home, he from a motel across the street from Disneyland. David had been promised that the theme park would be the next day’s activity. Instead, Charles slipped his son a sleeping pill, went out to buy kerosene, doused the boy head to toe as he slept, and tossed a match.

David was burned over 90 percent of his body. Everything was gone but his eyes. Though he survived, he’d suffer painful and debilitating complications for the rest of his life. He died at 42.

Charles Rothenberg’s “defense” was that in the custody dispute he’d been treated unfairly by the courts and his ex. That final angry cross-country phone call was the last straw; he was driven to his act.

They made him do it.

Violence, after all, is the voice of the oppressed. Bullied by judges and bitches, what else could he do? Of course he had to burn his son alive.

Are you sympathetic to poor Charley?

Likely not. I’ll bet “they made me do it” leaves you cold as an excuse.

But wait…the man feared losing his son! And his wife and the judges had been chipping away at his visitation due to accounts of his propensity for physical violence; indeed, during that angry phone call, Marie had even threatened to cut off visitation entirely!

Again, what else could he do but burn his child alive?

Surely you’re sympathetic to him now.

No? Still?

You coldhearted bastards. You’re just like the courts in the immolation aftermath. They painted poor Charley as some kind of monster, a beast, if you will! The press despised him; when California law stipulated that he could only get thirteen years for the crime, politicians from all parties rallied to change the law to keep future Rothenbergs locked up for life.

Anti-Charley bigotry, that’s what that is.

ABC even made an Emmy-winning TV movie about the incident that painted Rothenberg as a villain.

Media bias…is there no end to it?

Following Rothenberg’s release, police and prosecutors persecuted the poor dear. Every little crime he committed outside prison—possession of a gun and ammo (illegal for a parolee), credit card fraud, threats to public officials—was bumped up to a felony, until he was finally put away for life under Three Strikes.

Today, at 82, he sits in a cell, the victim of the biggest witch hunt—nay, legal lynching—in history.

Am I swaying you?

Probably not. And here’s why: We’re dealing with a principle, I’ll call it the Rothenberg Principle. Whatever beefs Charles Rothenberg had regarding custody became irrelevant the moment he set his son on fire. In theory, even if every complaint he had was legit—even if he had been treated unfairly by the courts, even if his wife was a raging bitch—none of that justified what he did to his son. I know that, and you know that. And neither you nor I care to relitigate his custody dispute in moot court of the damned because his act of March 16, 1983, not only made his complaints irrelevant but verified his wife’s. Yep, he was a shit-poor father, and if his ex wanted to end visitations, he proved her judgment correct.

Once you cross a line of such extraordinary egregiousness, whatever you claim “drove you to it” ceases to matter, and the rest of us have every right to say, “We don’t care. We’re checking out of the discussion.”

Bullied at school? That becomes moot once you shoot ten classmates. Boss treatin’ you bad at work? That becomes irrelevant once you kill fifteen coworkers. Whites bein’ raycist to you? Once you slit the throat of a white child or shoot up the LIRR, it doesn’t matter. You crossed a line, and one of the ways in which you should pay—beyond, of course, prison—is that your bitching about your gripes will never be heard. Even if they were legitimate gripes, fuck off with them; we ain’t listening.

I bet you’re all nodding at that. A sea of nodders.

But the right’s been getting pretty damn Rothenbergian recently. We can start with the formerly fringe nutcases, now the highest-visibility influencers thanks to Musk, who spend their days on Twitter crying “Hitler wuz wronged!”

“He wuz wronged by Churchill, wronged by FDR, wronged by Stalin who killed and expelled Germans at the end of the war and all Hitler ever done to him was violate the nonaggression pact and invade Russia slaughtering millions of Russians as he pledged to liquidate the entire nation.”

Hitler’s prewar beefs became irrelevant the moment he invaded Russia, taking the war into the realm of apocalyptic conflagration, and the moment pacified Jewish civilians were murdered en masse just for being Jews. The price Hitler needs to pay for Barbarossa, the Einsatzgruppen, the Ostland ghettos, and the Reinhard camps is the same price Rothenberg needs to pay: Cry all you want about what “drove you to it”; you crossed a line, and you proved correct all the bad things that were said about you.

The Palestinians are Rothenbergs supreme. “WE WUZ DRIVEN TO IT!” Endlessly relitigating a lost war from almost eighty years ago, they’re blameless for all they’ve been “made to do”: Entebbe, the Olympics massacre, the Avivim school bus bombing, the Coastal Road massacre, the Dolphinarium discotheque massacre, the Empire State Building shooting, the Hebrew University bombing, RFK (yes, it was Sirhan; sorry, Tucker), the Paradise Hotel bombing, the Passover massacre, October 7, and hundreds—not dozens, but hundreds—of individual bus bombings, restaurant bombings, hijackings, hostage-takings, and the like.

Yes, from their perspective they’ve been “driven” to use “the language of the oppressed” because the Jews won’t hand back their precious olive groves…the bestest olive groves in the world. Magical olive groves, tragically lost by the Palestinians, who now have no choice but to rape teens at a music festival because, I mean, olive groves, man!

And many far-rightists seem on board with the Palis on this.

So now go back and ask yourself: Theoretically, if Charles Rothenberg had, indeed, been treated cruelly by the courts and his ex, if he truly feared losing his olive grove (sorry, only son), if he felt disenfranchised and hopeless and unheard—does his “look what I was driven to” defense give you pause now?

Does it make you wanna start a petition for his release? After all, he’s an old man deprived of his rights! His right to free movement! Property ownership! He lost everything he owned. He sits in cruel isolation (literally, in segregated housing because other prisoners threaten him).

If he was “driven” to his crime, and if being “driven to your crime” means you get a free pass (like Hitler and the Palis to their fanboys), shouldn’t Rothenberg get a pass too, if his claims of oppression and mistreatment are true?

Obviously, there are people who sincerely want to save Pali children, and I respect that. But it’s not “Islamophobia” or “Jewish brainwashing” that’s made a lot of Americans and Israelis check out of that issue. It’s the Rothenberg Principle.

A principle, BTW, that needn’t involve violent acts. In fact, there’s a nonviolent, but still hugely destructive, example of the Rothenberg Principle that MAGAs have really taken to. It goes something like this: “Sure, I spread fakes, rumors, and ridiculous conspiracy bullshit online. Is everything I post, or say, verified? Accurate? True? That’s not the point. The libs and the lamestream media have driven me to this. It’s my only way to fight back against their big-money lies! Fake memes are the language of the suppressed. Plus, with all the evil shit the libs do, how am I supposed to not believe every story about false flags and weird plots? Paul Pelosi was attacked by his gay lover! Tim Walz is a pedo! J6 was a setup! School shooters are midgets working for OBAMMER! Hurricanes are weather warfare! Those evil libs have made me believe they’re capable of anything! They’ve robbed me of my incredulity. If I’m nuts, they made me nuts.”

“Look what they did to me, man!”

Candace Owens saying “Scientists are so untrustworthy, so corrupt, I no longer believe the earth is round. I no longer believe in the moon landing. See what they drove me to? It’s their fault; LOOK WHAT THEY’VE TURNED ME INTO!”

That, BTW, is her literal reason for embracing flat earth.

And do you think scientists are saying, “What have we done to beautiful, brilliant Candace? Because of our wicked deceitfulness, the poor girl has embraced flat earth. Witnessing how we’ve forced her to become a babbling lunatic has convinced us that we need to fly straight from now on. We’ve learned the errors of our ways!”

That’s what Owens thinks scientists are saying right now. Because she’s mentally retarded.

But no, scientists are not “shamed” by Owens embracing flat-earthism. Rather, they’re pleased Owens is discrediting herself and, in the process, making it harder for legitimate critics of junk science and agenda-driven scientists to be believed. Yes, much of popular science is corrupted by money (government and corporate); yes, scientists justifiably lost public trust during Covid. No, you’re not “shaming them” by going off the deep end while screaming, “Look what they turned me into!”

As someone who used to spar daily with Holocaust deniers on Twitter until “Free Speech Musk” banned me for life, I can tell you that if you nail deniers again and again on a particular denial falsehood, they’ll always resort to “but with all the lies told after the war—soap! Lampshades! Eagles and bears!—how can I be expected to believe in anything anymore?”

In other words, look what they drove me to! It’s a good thing the great historians of the world didn’t use old falsehoods as an excuse to not seek new truth. But of course deniers aren’t historians—they’re perpetual victims, either lying about the Holocaust or lying that the Holocaust made them lie about the Holocaust.

No sense of accountability. Like Owens, MAGA memers, Hitler fanboys, and Charles Rothenberg, whose excuses, it should be noted, won nobody over to his side. His self-piteous whining about “unfairness” made no one forget his atrocity, an atrocity that led to his wife gaining sole custody, and him losing his child in the most permanent manner possible.

Swing voters will not weep for you as you cry, “Pity me for the untruths I’m forced to share!”

With one week left before the election, do try to keep that in mind.