My blog postings in the last couple of days have, more or less explicitly, considered how those who lost the recent presidential election should now act, given that we know that our next president will be Donald J. Trump, and a Donald J. Trump who showed signs, during the campaign, of wanting to be a "dictator," even if only for a day.
Many of those who opposed Trump in the election have taken very seriously the threat that we will be facing an autocratic, wanna-be "king," or "dictator," when Donald Trump is installed as president next January. Project 2025, and Trump's campaign itself, gives substance to this concern. However, as I said in my blog posting yesterday, quoting Yale law professor Samuel Moyn, it is probably true that there is "no alternative to persuading our fellow citizens of our beliefs."
Those concerned that the recent election signals the "End of Democracy" have to admit that Mr. Trump won the election, democratically, and absent some sort of armed resistance, something along the line of the "Civil War" that some Trump supporters seemed to be contemplating prior to the election, should Trump have lost, we are going to have to operate within the confines of the current political environment. We are going to have to play by "Moyn's rules."
It would be absolutely wrong to decide, since Mr. Trump was elected, that the majority of the voters have declared their desire for the kind of autocratic, totalitarian approach that Trump seemed to feature during his campaign. We need to "resist" that sort of autocratic approach to government - but by "persuasion," not "power." Best I can tell, that is where everyone seems to be coming down. We need to make our system of democratic self-government work the way it is supposed to - and everyone needs to abide by those "Moyn rules."
But what if Mr. Trump and his supporters (in Congress and otherwise) actually do want to eliminate democratic self-government, as many feared before the election? The New York Times, on November 25, 2024, carried a Guest Essay by Joel Gray, an American actor who is best known for portraying the Master of Ceremonies in the musical Cabaret on Broadway and in Bob Fosse's 1972 film adaptation. In his Guest Essay, which I am reprinting in full, below, Gray warns us all to be aware of that possibility.
PAY ATTENTION! TAKE HEED! No capitulation to autocracy! No tolerance for totalitarianism!
oooOOOooo
I Starred in ‘Cabaret.’ We Need to Heed Its Warning.
Nov. 24, 2024
By Joel Grey
Mr. Grey played the Emcee in the original Broadway production of “Cabaret” and in the motion picture version, for which he won a Tony Award and an Academy Award.
This past week marked 58 years since the opening night for the Broadway premiere of “Cabaret” in 1966. At the time, the country was in deep turmoil. Overseas, the Vietnam War was escalating, and at home, our most regressive forces were counterpunching against the progress demanded by the civil rights movement. The composer John Kander, the lyricist Fred Ebb and the playwright Joe Masteroff wrote “Cabaret” in collaboration with the director Harold Prince as a response to the era. The parallels between the rise of fascism in 1930s Berlin as depicted in the show and the mounting tensions of the 1960s in America were both obvious and ominous.
I played the Emcee — the Kit Kat Club’s master of distraction, keeping Berlin mesmerized while Nazism slipped in through the back door. Night after night, I witnessed audiences grappling with the raw, unsettling reflection that “Cabaret” held up to them. Some material was simply too much for the audience to handle. “If You Could See Her,” which has the Emcee singing of his love for a gorilla — a thinly veiled commentary on antisemitic attitudes — ended with the lyric: “If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.”
When we first performed it, in Boston, audiences gasped and recoiled. It was too offensive, too raw, too cruel. Producers fretted and the line was changed to “She isn’t a meeskite at all,” softening the blow, yes, but also the impact. I resented the change and would often, to the chagrin of stage management, “forget” to make the swap throughout that pre-Broadway run.
I’m hearing from friends in the current Broadway production of “Cabaret” that the line is once again getting an audible response, but of a different sort. On more than one occasion in the past two weeks — since the election — a small number of audience members have squealed with laughter at “She wouldn’t look Jewish at all.” In the late 1960s, we softened the line because the truth was too hard to hear. Today, it seems the line is playing exactly as the Nazi-sympathizing Emcee would have intended.
My initial assessment, when word first reached me about this unusual reaction, was that these must be the triumphant laughs of the complicit, suddenly drunk on power and unafraid to let their bigotry be known. Now I find myself considering other hypotheses. Are these the hollow, uneasy laughs of an audience that has retreated into the comfort of irony and detachment? Are these vocalized signals of acceptance? Audible white flags of surrender to the state of things? A collective shrug of indifference?
I honestly don’t know which of these versions I find most ominous, but all of them should serve as a glaring reminder of how dangerously easy it is to accept bigotry when we are emotionally exhausted and politically overwhelmed.
The 1960s were a time of social upheaval, but also a time of hope. There was a sense that as a society, we were striving toward progress — that the fight for civil rights, for peace, for equality was a fight we could win. “Cabaret,” with its portrayal of a decadent society willfully ignorant of its own demise, provided a stark counterpoint to that hope. It was a warning against the seductive power of distraction, the dangers of apathy and the perils of looking away when history demands that we look closer.
Now, in 2024, we find ourselves in a different, far more precarious moment. The recent election of Donald Trump to a second term has left many Americans, particularly those who fought so hard against the forces of authoritarianism and hate, feeling drained and disillusioned. There’s a sense that we have seen this show before, that we know how it ends, and that we’re powerless to stop it. Or worse, a sense that even though we are facing dark times, they won’t really affect our own day-to-day lives — echoing the tragically shortsighted assessment of so many European Jews in the 1920s and ’30s.
“Cabaret,” with all its humor, spectacle and tunefulness, has always been both the peanut butter and the pill hidden within. It’s an entertainment that seduces us into distraction. “Leave your troubles outside,” the Emcee implores in his opening number. “In here, life is beautiful.” It’s also a cautionary tale that forces us to confront the perils of falling prey to such distractions.
The current revival cleverly ramps up the seduction, staging the show in a fully immersive, champagne-soaked party environment constructed to beguile its audience. Only when the Nazis finally show up do we see how false our velvet-enrobed sense of security has been. We, too, have chosen not to see what has been directly in front of us.
The democratic election of an authoritarian figure, the normalization of bigotry, the complicity of the frightened masses — none of these are new themes. We have indeed seen this show before, and I fear we do know how it ends. It’s understandable to want to retreat, to find solace where we can, but we cannot afford to look away.
History is giving us another chance to confront the forces that “Cabaret” warned us about. The question is: Will we listen this time, or will we keep laughing until the music stops?
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