Guest Essay: Round Up The Usual Suspects

How cinema can help Americans navigate life in a fascist dictatorship under Trump

Today, we have a guest essay from a dear friend and important thinker, Howell Malham. In addition to my regular messaging posts, I want to start sharing messages from people who bring a unique perspective on the world, inspire me, and challenge my thinking. Mr. Malham checks all those boxes and more. I hope you enjoy. Howell, the mic is yours::

A second Trump presidency has a lot of people worried.

And with good reason.

This country has willfully elected a convicted felon and self-proclaimed dictator who has, among other autocratic moves, threatened to declare martial law on day one of his presidency, something that could last for the duration of his regime.

That’s not all.

He has vowed to “blow torch” our democratic institutions, jail his political opponents, and essentially turn America into his own private commercial enterprise—a first-world banana republic of sorts—enriching himself, his family, and his mega donors along the way, cleaning out the country from top to bottom.

Given such an ominous and unsettling prologue to Trump, Part 2:The Revenge, it’s easy to understand why so many Americans appear to be suffering from acute adjustment disorder. Even folks who voted for him are beginning to realize that our first felon-president has no intention of, for one thing, magically lowering the price of groceries simply because he can’t.

His highly revised stance on immigration, at the behest of Elon Musk and his fellow “broligarchs,” has MAGA faithful apoplectic with anger. And let’s not forget that his base is just beginning to figure out what a tariff is—and that it’s not such a good thing after all. In fact, if Trump’s policies are enacted en toto, inflation is bound to get much worse.

Next-level nonsense, the kind our 47th president relishes, is just beginning—and The Don hasn’t even been sworn in.

Philosophy, Great Books, poetry, and art in general can be of service to those who are not only trying to keep calm and carry on, but reexamining their lives in order to know what their duty is as Americans at such a time. And how best to do it in the face of socio-political upheaval on a grand scale. (Thankfully, Trump’s American fascists haven’t outlawed human agency—yet.)

At present, I’m finding the most useful role models in cinema.

The best anti-fascist films that Hollywood has to offer provide pure, evergreen entertainment. What I've discovered of late is that they are training films, too, if you know how to watch them.

While there is no dearth of anti-fascist films from 20th and early 21st century cinema, two movies stand out because of their universal popularity; and the fact that the archetypes portrayed on screen are so clearly limned that there is no doubt in most cases who will do what as the Nazis make the scene: Casablanca and The Sound of Music (TOSM).

For those of us who have ever wondered what action we would take, or not take, in Casablanca, 1941, or in Austria during the Anschluss, Trump—and the oligarchs who have propped him up—are presenting us with a golden invitation to wonder no more.

What follows is a Myers-Briggs-like type indicator to help you determine who you are, or who you will be, when the goose-stepping commences down Main Street: Captain von Trapp or Herr Zeller? Richard Blaine or Captain Renault? Those answers will, hopefully, provide a clearer understanding of what you do after January 20th. And how you’ll do it.

1) The Non-Interventionist: Strange as it is to contemplate, there's little separating Uncle Max (Richard Haydn) in TSOM and Richard "Rick" Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca. They both make it quite clear that they have no interest in choosing sides for much of the respective films. "Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, just make sure it doesn't happen to you," sniffs Uncle Max, drawing the unambiguous ire of Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). Rick says as much in Casablanca, when he excuses himself from the table of Major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt) and Vichy's Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), explaining: "Your business is politics. Mine is running a saloon." Both are redeemed in the end as they choose, in his own way, to resist: Uncle Max risks torture possibly even death at the hands of the Nazis by scheming with the captain to help the von Trapps escape. Rick and Renault begin their "beautiful friendship" by joining a Free French garrison at Brazzaville to fight the good fight for democracy. But there’s one insurmountable challenge for every non-interventionist: while they may not be interested in the conflict, the conflict may very well take an interest in them. Remember, as Leonard Cohen sang in The Captain, “there’s no decent place to stand in a massacre.”

2) The Collaborator: Captain Renault is the very portrait of resigned collaboration from the very first in Casablanca. Effete yet not officious, he's charmingly cynical while Rick is cynically charming. His heart isn't really with Vichy. Nor is it in the Third Reich. His interests, as he says with casual detachment, blow with the wind, and the prevailing wind in Casablanca happens to be blowing from Nazi Germany. Like Rick, Renault sticks his head out for no one. Unlike Rick, Renault is a bureaucrat and an order-taker who likes to believe he is master of his own fate—until Major Strasser or Rick remind him otherwise. He is quite content to profit from his role as a collaborator in uniform, trading exit visas for straight sex—his “little romances” as he calls them. And he appreciates the fact that Rick always lets him win at roulette: part of the deal that allows Rick's Café Américain (a front for a casino) to remain open. As mentioned, he is redeemed in the end, and underscores that redemption by dumping a bottle of Vichy water into a wastebasket and booting it across the floor. Not so for any of the collaborators in TOSM: The Austrians who gladly throw in with Hitler’s Germans—Rolf, messenger boy/Romeo turned Nazi fanatic; Franz, the von Trapp's treasonous butler; Herr Zeller—are not redeemed. If they are, we are not permitted to bear witness to it. While it is tempting to think collaboration is the safest move, it’s best to remember that the Nazis eventually lose—in both films. And in real life. Reintegration with those whom collaborators have betrayed (their own countrymen, namely) is fraught with all sorts of peril, and is never worth the tradeoff in the long run.

3) The Profiteer: Casablanca opens with the news of the death of two Nazi couriers carrying letters of transport, which are not found on the bodies. Those letters stand to make somebody a great deal of money on the black market, and that somebody is Ugarte (Peter Lorre). Like every other shrewd businessman in Casablanca, such as Signor Ferrari (Syndey Greenstreet) and even Rick himself to a degree, Ugarte has no qualms making a hefty profit at the expense of others—namely, those who are seeking safe passage to Lisbon and then, America! Unfortunately, Ugarte ends up just as dead as those Nazi couriers, and Rick finds himself in sole possession of the coveted exit visas. Uncle Max (TOSM) falls into this category, too. All he thinks about is how to cash in on The Von Trapp Family Singers, not how best to fight for a free and independent Austria although, as we know, he is redeemed. Signor Ferrari, “The Fat Man of Casablanca,” so far as we know, continues to run the Blue Parrot, continues to move cigarettes and booze at the highest possible prices, and ostensibly loses not a wink of sleep over the fact that, for some business people, gains are gains, even ill-gotten ones. For the amoral yet ambitious type, this is the perfect move: turning a blind eye to the suffering of others and cashing in on it. In the end, profiteers might have enough to buy a way out of any uncomfortable situation, and avoid a day of reckoning in this life. But when they are alone, they’ll be in miserable company.

4) The Refugee: We don't see many people high-tailing it to the borders in TOSM after the Anschluss, not until the last aerial shot which shows the von Trapps making their way over the Alps to Switzerland. Casablanca is a different story. The whole city is teeming with refugees from war-torn Europe, willing to do anything, sell anything, to get to America—the America of 1941, that is, which was far more welcoming to refugees and immigrants than the America of 2024. If one doesn't have the cash, acquiring letters of transport, and covering all related expenses, is out of the question. Proving to be “a rank sentimentalist,” Rick lends a reluctant hand to a young couple from Bulgaria. He fixes things so the anxious and unlucky husband can (finally) win just enough at the roulette table to purchase exit visas from Renault, foiling the latter’s master plan of bedding the young but not-so-naive wife in exchange for a couple of hot tickets to paradise. The reality is, most refugees will never leave Casablanca, forcing them, in time, to choose another role when fleeing is no longer an option. Something to contemplate before one starts climbing every mountain to get out of Trump’s fascist America.

5) The Resister: Much of the cast and supporting cast of Casablanca are prepared to resist, it seems, aside from the refugees (who just want out), the profiteers, and the Nazis. Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) and his enchanting wife Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) are the most obvious forces of Nazi resistance, although Ilsa is prepared to abandon Victor for Rick if the latter should decide to stick around Casablanca. Even Yvonne (Madeleine Lebeau), one of Rick's throwaway lovers, comes ‘round to the notion of resistance. After pulling a Coco Chanel and hopping into bed—literally—with the Nazis to save her skin and amuse herself during the war, Yyvonne, and almost everyone else at Rick's, undergoes a supernatural transformation before our eyes as Victor Laszlo leads the entire cafe in a rousing rendition of "La Marseillaise." It’s a tune that, for 235 years and counting, has had the power to swell the heart, irrigate the eyes, and exhort anyone within earshot to drop whatever they’re doing at the moment and “march into Hell for a Heavenly cause” armed only with the French tricolor and a phrygian cap. Except for Nazis, of course. TOSM is a different story. Aside from Uncle Max who helps the von Trapps escape, the only other observable force of resistance are the Benedictine nuns at the abbey where Maria underwent her novitiate. Not only do they hide the von Trapps in their cemetery behind the altar-tombs set in a gated niche against the abbey walls, they go one better and sabotage the Nazi’s cars, preventing the Aryan goons from pursuing the captain, Maria, and the kids. Will the nuns be punished for such heroism? Probably. But that's the thing about a true resister: they know that if one has principles, one better be willing to live—and die—by them, otherwise those principles are nothing but a damned nuisance.

It may be too soon to tell who any of us will become in this new America with an oppressive government of multi-billionaires, by multi-billionaires, and for multi-billionaires; and where the most incompetent and corrupt men can commit crimes then become president. (Nixon and Reagan had it backward, apparently.)

But the day is coming, perhaps next month or next year, when you will have to determine whether it’s fight, flight, or friend.

With any luck, you’ll choose before circumstances, or the Trump regime, make the choice for you.