A couple of weeks ago, along with a tiny gaggle of Hillary Clinton for President supporters, I was standing on Fifth Avenue in front of the garishly gold and ostentatious testament to a man with penile insecurities known as Trump Tower. A few of my cohorts were holding up hastily made signs (i.e. "GOP—Grab Our Pussies—Dump Trump") lambasting the megalomaniacal misogynist who somehow became the Republican candidate for President.
It was clear this mini-protest was desperately in need of a rhythmic chant. I lobbied for a message that would cut THE CRETIN to his core and suggested a variation on the battle cry "Let's Go Ran-gers" for my favorite hockey team: TRUMP'S-A-LOSER.
I was imagining the totalitarian twit watching us through a security camera and ranting at the top of lungs in agony like the Roman Emperor Caligula at the end of the film The Robe after he hears the characters played by Richard Burton and Jean Simmons announce they would "rather die than live another day in a kingdom ruled by you."
Aside from the fact that I've basically despised Donald Trump since he emerged on the New York scene like primordial ooze that was left out of the evolutionary process, one of the motivations for making this symbolic stand at one of The Donald's phallic symbol erections (and sign up for a get-out-the vote bus trip to suburban Pennsylvania this past Sunday) is CABARET.
No, not Cabaret as in the performance art form in which I've indulged as a reviewer, performer, producer, promoter, and publicist for the last six years, but Cabaret, as in the iconic Broadway musical and film.
It had been decades since I watched the Bob Fosse movie version so when I found it on Turner Classic Movies during Labor Day weekend, I took the musical trip to pre-World War II Germany. As wonderful a piece of cinematic art Cabaret certainly is, but it's not a film you want to watch in the midst of a Presidential election when one of the candidates displays all the signs of being a Hitler mini-me. But then again, maybe it is.
There are many intensely disturbing scenes in Cabaret. There's the one early in the film when Nazi party thugs--after having previously been banished from the Kit Kat Club--viciously beat up the owner. There's the scene when Michael York's character Brian is pummeled by a bunch of young Nazi's after he slaps some Nationalist Socialist Party propaganda out of their hands.
And there's the scene when some young hooligans who've been seduced by the fascist message leave the dead dog of Marissa Berenson's character Natalia in front of her home with the word "Juden!" scrawled on the door step.
But probably the most disturbing scene in Cabaret begins idyllically in a rural beer garden. As Brian and his bi-sexual lover Max are having cocktails in the midst of the locals on a sun-drenched afternoon, an apparently non-threatening young Aryan Adonis begins to sing in a soft, lilting tenor: The sun on the meadow is summery warm . . . The stag in the forest runs free . . . But gather together to greet the storm . . . Tomorrow belongs to me . . . As he begins singing the second verse, the camera slowly pans down his body to reveal the brown uniform of the Hitler youth, still in its nascent stage. As the song progresses, the vocal becomes more aggressively strident and the young man raises his right hand in the Nazi salute. Inspired almost to the point of frenzy, the locals stand, join in the singing, and mimic the gesture that would come to identify the most murderous nation on the planet - one hell bent on world domination.
In Cabaret, the young Nazis sing, The Future Belongs to Me. We Hillary supporters must say no loudly.
At the risk of being overly dramatic, this was the depressing epiphany engendered from that scene in Cabaret.
The "pitchfork and torches" audiences at Donald Trump rallies, especially during the Presidential campaign, have been the angry American equivalent of German townspeople singing, "Tomorrow Belongs To Me." Only their version has been "Make America Great Again." They've ecstatically cheered at his racist dog whistles, his demonization of the media, his reckless rhetoric about "carpet bombing ISIS," his exhortations to "lock up" his opponent, and his whining about the election being "rigged."
What, in their fanatical minds, will make America great again?
Give the military a blank check. Build border walls. Deport all immigrants. Let everyone have guns. Punish women who have abortions. Suppress voting rights, especially of minorities. Put that "B---h/C—t" Hillary in jail. And perhaps take to armed revolution if the election doesn't go their supreme leader's way.
This is why Donald Trump has been a threat to our Republic, and why even after he loses the election he will be leaving some very scary stuff in his wake.
Life will not be a cabaret, old chums, even if Hillary Clinton wins in a landslide.
The list of Trump's reprehensible words, actions, and policy positions are endless. Any one of this sociopathic miscreant's pronouncements should have disqualified him as a candidate when the primary process began. Yes, he combines being a pathological liar and an unapologetic narcissist ("I didn't apologize to Melania because I didn't do anything wrong" he shamelessly claimed in the last debate about his sexual assaults against women) with being a bigot, a racist, and a soulless sexual predator completely devoid of empathy.
Add to all that his ignorance of the Constitution and his embrace of the Russian dictator and you've got a toxic brew that makes you wonder how someone doesn't contract radiation poisoning when they come close to his air space. Thankfully, the campaign process went on long enough for his deplorable personality profile to come out in the wash. Trump's typically childish and unhinged performance in the final debate confirmed our worst fears about him and also thankfully slammed the door on any chance he had to become President. You could almost feel more than half a country exhaling in unison.
But the stain that will remain after Trump is an embarrassing historical footnote (especially if his business "empire" completely collapses—hey, we can hope can't we?) is the re-emergence of the "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" crowd, no matter how fringy that might be. Like an evil Dr. Frankenstein, Donald Trump, his despicable Hillary-hating, Alt-Right puppet masters (Steve Bannon of Breitbart News, Kellyanne Conway, David Bossie, Roger Ailes, and Rudy Giuliani), and his insufferably stupid surrogates led by Hurricane Katrina Pierson (the rest of the list is too long to name here so fill in the blank) have reanimated the dead body of the monster that is the White Supremacist Movement. Trump's defeat may save us from a potential nuclear catastrophe, but it won't change this dangerous dynamic: His candidacy based on hate and fear (pretty much the usual Republican party M.O., but taken to the extreme with Trump) has given new voice to millions of gun-loving xenophobes who despise Jews, Catholics, African-Americans, and anyone else who they deem a threat to their notion of white superiority.
Our focus for now Is clear.
Vote Hillary 2016.
Stop Trump.
Stop the haters.
TOMORROW CAN BELONG TO ALL OF US .
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October 31, 201
Addendum. A longer version of this article is available here.