Oh, Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign your children have waited to see

[sovay]

I go back and forth on whether I think "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" is more frightening in the original stage version of Cabaret or in Bob Fosse's 1972 film. Dramatically, I find it more upsetting when it reprises as the first-act finale at the engagement party of Frau Schneider and Herr Schultz, which until then has been so joyous and informal as to include a song with Yiddish lyrics; musically, the crashing, triumphal arrangement of the beer garden scene actually scares me, the exultant repetition, the way people surge to their feet with a fervor like anger in their faces, even if the lip-synching throws me out a little. Talking with derspatchel last night in the shower, I realized why the song is disturbing to me: not just because of its pastoral, romantic imagery that darkens so successfully into martial nationalism that Kander and Ebb were accused of transplanting a real-life Nazi anthem into a Broadway musical, or because we know where history is heading long before our protagonists do, or even because it's the Nazis, but because it derives its gut-punch effect in both versions from how suddenly and dangerously the tone of a group can change around a person. At the party, thinking you were safe among friends and discovering that you're not. At the beer garden, thinking you were safe among strangers and discovering that you're not. All around you, people are declaring themselves your enemy—whether they know you personally or not—and in less than three minutes it's done; you're not safe here; now you know. I likened it to watching the election results come in in November. I know now that Trump lost the popular vote by millions and squeaked through the electoral college on the technicalities of a nineteenth-century racist system, but at the time it was exactly that sudden draining disorientation: I am living in a country that is against me. Admittedly the experience had neither the clarity of hindsight nor a catchy melody, but maybe if I wait twenty years.

The internet tells me that one of Trump's reactions to the release of the dossier that is currently consuming the news as well as inspiring Chuck Tingle was to demand, "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" I actually spent a moment trying to figure out how he meant the question—which side of this historical projection did he see himself on? Was he actually claiming victimhood on the scale of the Holocaust? If his familiar complaint of "fake news" was intended to echo his supporters' cries of Lügenpresse, didn't he realize he was identifying himself with the NSDAP instead?—before I realized it was irrelevant: Trump has absorbed that a Nazi is the worst thing you can call your political enemies regardless of their actual behaviors or beliefs (and regardless of yours, too) and hurled it out into the crowd to see if he could make it stick. I feel no surprise at his continuing dearth of historical awareness, but I do hope it further disappoints his neo-Nazi supporters who were counting on him being the great white nationalist hope of their generation. They're already having a hard time organizing their hate march in Montana. Let it only get harder from here. [edit: Looks like it did.] They had enough of the past; they don't get tomorrow.

Comments

[dewline]

The news from Billings that you note towards the end of this entry is, by turns, disturbing, amusing and entertaining. I won't laugh out loud just yet, but some minor snickering might be in order if things in Whitefish continue along the present trend line.

[sovay]

I won't laugh out loud just yet, but some minor snickering might be in order if things in Whitefish continue along the present trend line.

I'm certainly hoping!

Further excuse to snicker, we hope...

[dewline]

From Missoula:

http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/neo-nazi-site-white-supremacist-march-in-whitefish-postponed/article_79ebc25b-f2ba-57d9-9a87-8fc7d3dc8c18.html

Re: Further excuse to snicker, we hope...

[sovay]

From Missoula

Good!

Thank you for the update.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

This expresses very handily the things I also feel about Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

It stopped me dead in my tracks when I first heard it, because it had the haunting, piercing sound of a boy's choir, a sound I had only previously associated with explicitly Jewish recordings, so it was a double whammy. The clear, beautiful tone I knew so well being used to romanticize something so awful was an immediate betrayal. And that made it really genius.

I am also unsure which side of the disordered discourse Der Drumf thinks he's on. I suspect it shifts from monthly to moment to whatever provides a convenient one liner to deflect blame or disparagement.

I sometimes wonder if a random quote generator would produce a similar quantity of unreadable and incongruous political positioning.

[sovay]

This expresses very handily the things I also feel about Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

I realized it wasn't getting out of my head, so I might as well study it.

I am also unsure which side of the disordered discourse Der Drumf thinks he's on. I suspect it shifts from monthly to moment to whatever provides a convenient one liner to deflect blame or disparagement.

I suspect you're right. I don't know that he cares.

I sometimes wonder if a random quote generator would produce a similar quantity of unreadable and incongruous political positioning.

But I wouldn't blame it! I expect more from theoretically sentient beings!

[drwex]

it was irrelevant: Trump has absorbed that a Nazi is the worst thing you can call your political enemies regardless of their actual behaviors or beliefs (and regardless of yours, too) and hurled it out into the crowd to see if he could make it stick

This, so very much this. His style is to push and see how far he can get, then backpedal so he can't be pinned to specifics. He does/does not agree that Russia hacked the system to get him elected. He did/did not call CNN a fake news source.

He has no ideology beyond a raving id and whatever momentary advantage he thinks he can seize.

[sovay]

He has no ideology beyond a raving id and whatever momentary advantage he thinks he can seize.

I do think he has some ideology; it doesn't have to be conscious or coherent to structure his decisions. I genuinely think he believes that women are objects, sexual and ornamental—everything in his remarks and behavior bears it out—and while he may have found it convenient to build his campaign on white insularity and xenophobia, I don't think he just adopted it as a stance out of the air, either. He's a rich white man in America and nobody ever disabused him of the belief that those attributes entitled him to fuck whoever he felt like and kick the shit out of the rest. I agree with the raving id, the gratification of the momentary advantage, and the conviction that truth is meaningless when it comes to him. Reality is what he says it is. If it contradicts him, it's because reality is wrong. I think he really would have imploded and faded from view if people hadn't given him the power of their attention. Unfortunately, the media covered him like a real candidate and the Republicans broke the spine of their party for him and now here we are.

[drwex]

I think of an ideology, which I think of as a coherent set of beliefs, and a random collection of things-held-true. I think we all have beliefs of one sort or another but only some people subscribe to sets of beliefs I'd call ideologies.

In reading "the center has collapsed" article I was struck by the opportunistic nature of the Trumpists, in their willingness to grab popular (populist?) ideas from whatever ideology happened to be around.

[sovay]

I think we all have beliefs of one sort or another but only some people subscribe to sets of beliefs I'd call ideologies.

So I'm not actually sure I agree with that: I think anyone who has an idea of how a society should work—in terms of both aspiration and operation—subscribes to an ideology. It doesn't have to match the textbook definition in every particular to count. A person doesn't have to believe in only one at a time. I'm pretty sure most people's political feelings are a grab-bag of several different overlapping ideals, priorities, and strategies. But I think it is very difficult to hold—or be influenced by—no ideologies at all. Like people who say that they're apolitical: what they usually mean is that they support the status quo, they just don't want to identify themselves with it. Or their definition of "political" applies only to causes they don't agree with or don't care about. But it is very rare for a person to feel real, total indifference about the ways in which their country is governed and its decisions affect their life.

In reading "the center has collapsed" article I was struck by the opportunistic nature of the Trumpists, in their willingness to grab popular (populist?) ideas from whatever ideology happened to be around.

But they went for very specific ones: nationalist, nostalgic, white-centered, anti-feminist, socially conservative in ways that nothing to do with economic conservatism. Trump and his advisors did not actually grab that many ideas from the liberal spectrum, if any. Maybe some libertarianism, although their idea of hands-off government applies only to things like vaccination and welfare; otherwise they want the government's hands all over your body and your health. They were not equal-opportunity magpies. They came out, as a party, with a remarkably consistent set of ideals in the end. Does it look exactly like any of the currently identified ideologies? Maybe not, or people wouldn't have spent so much time scrambling to define it, but it's definitely a thing.

[desireearmfeldt]

...meanwhile, your post title has earwormed me but good. Of course, so does your username, usually. :)

[sovay]

...meanwhile, your post title has earwormed me but good.

It is horribly catchy. They did that well, too.

Of course, so does your username, usually.

I didn't know!