Commentary Hollywood was once one of America’s shining lights.  Movies such as “Casablanca,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” the Westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks, the comedies of Buster Keaton, Preston Sturges and the Marx Brothers, all the way to “Star Wars” and “American Graffiti”—I could go on and on—literally defined our country and signaled our greatness and freedom to the world. That’s over. Finita la commedia, as they say.   Now, Hollywood is basically a fiefdom of China, whose apparatchiks dictate the studios’ content according to what comports with the party line. Money not only talks, it screams. The movies, with isolated exceptions, have gone downhill for years. It was just beginning to happen when I went out there to try my hand at the film business around 1970.   Leftism has always been present in Hollywood—I was pretty left-leaning myself in those days—but …