Liza Minelli 

              (credit: Public Management Association, via Wikimedia Commons)

Signs of a Scary Hazard

One of my many fears about the way that US politics are going is that there are too many people who don’t seem to recognize a hazard even when it is right in front of them.

Let me elaborate.

A couple of the scariest scenes in all of movie-making history are in the movie “Cabaret”. Bob Fosse directed, Michael York and Liza Minelli starred. It was set in Berlin in 1931. The Nazis have not yet got to power in Germany, but they are clearly getting stronger by the month. Through the course of the movie, more and more battles between Communists and Nazi thugs, and generally all who oppose the Nazis appear in the streets and in the clubs.

In the middle scenes of the story, Brian (York), Sally (Minelli), and their short-term friend, the Baron, are riding in his Mercedes limo through the downtown core of Berlin. Sally is asleep in the back seat, the Baron’s chauffeur is driving, and the Baron and Brian are talking in that same back seat. It’s a big car.

They come upon an ugly street scene. Nazi thugs have battled in the streets with Communist thugs, and someone has been killed. The body is lying in the street and people are standing about in awkward poses, not moving. Fosse clearly did not want viewers to forget this scene.

The Baron says somewhat glibly, “The Nazis are a bunch of stupid hooligans, but they do serve a purpose. We will use them to control the Communists, and later we will control them.”

Brian is a very intelligent man, a young prof from Cambridge University who is doing a year in Berlin as part of his Ph. D. training in German Language and Literature. He is looking at the scene with worry written on every line of his face, and he responds to the Baron’s remark with a skeptical grimace.

                           "Cabaret" movie poster (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

                                          (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

In almost the very next scene, again Sally is asleep in the car (hung over from too much champagne, probably). Brian and the Baron stop for lunch at a pub on a small backroad in the countryside. Bavaria, probably, though I don’t recall whether any clues tell viewers for sure what part of rural Germany they are in.

As they pause for a smoke after their lunches, a small band in one corner of the pub begins to play a sweet-sounding melody, and then a Nazi youth starts to sing a song. It is a patriotic song, telling of how “tomorrow belongs to me”. He is blue-eyed, blond, and very good-looking in his Hitler Youth uniform and, apparently, one hundred percent certain his party is right, his leader is right, and he is right. The Nazis, the scene implies, will build a new Germany. Or so this kid thinks.

But the scariest part lies in how the scene ends. By the end of the song, the lunch hour crowd in the pub, about 70 people sitting in outdoor seating, are all singing the chorus of the boy’s song, then standing, and raising their arms in the Nazi salute.

Brian and the Baron go back to the car. As they approach it, they both glance back at the pub. Brian says, “You still think you’re going to control them?” The Baron shrugs disdainfully.

We in the audience, of course, know what is coming for Germany and the world. This strutting clown with his shouting and his “Hail Victory” saluting is no wall-paper hanger (one of the odd jobs Hitler did in his lost years in Vienna). But the Baron seems just as smug in his view of the situation in 1931 as the Hitler Youth singer in the outdoor pub is in his. Utterly complacent.

Why this disturbs me in our time is that I’m beginning to see signs that there are people supporting Trump who know he’s a clown. A hooligan. But they seem to think that he is needed to stop the postmodernists and moral relativists who are infecting our elites, especially our university elites, in these times. I don’t care for postmodernism and moral relativism either. But I’m not about to make the Baron’s mistake. It’s lazy and naïve. You don’t make bargains with dragons.

                                Hitler in Nazi parade (1928) (credit: Wikipedia) 

It’s very hard to read political signs in one’s own times. But the parallels that one can draw between 1931 and our times are many.

I have to leave off. I’m scaring myself.

Have a nice day.