THE RIGHT WORD

     August 3rd, 2022 is a momentous day. So momentus I thought all day about how I wanted to describe my elation when I heard that voters in Kansas had voted down measure 2, the anti-abortion measure. We knew that when Roe v Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court that there would be a backlash. What we did not know was how strong it would be, especially in a cherry red state.

     It turned out to be a thundering message to rightwing extremism. Not in every state that had primaries yesterday, but Kansas was significant. I needed the right description, fitting for this moment that will be remembered into posterity. The right word, according to Mark Twain who knew something about words, was the difference between the lightning bug, and lightning. I wanted lightning. A great flash of streak lightning that cracked loudly and ruffled your shirt with the sheet of air that it pushed before it. An electric charge that raised the hair on the back of your neck. That right word. Better yet, the right visual representation, a description from ironically, a love story where love loses out to nobility.

     The iconic movie Casablanca, with its spectacular writing and legendary cast of characters, was filmed in 1942, in the middle of the war with fascism. It takes place in Morocco a French colony, after the Germans had rolled into Paris and installed the hated Vichy government. Color movies did not exist then but it's perfect in black and white. It takes place around a nightclub owned by Rick Blaine an American expatriate, played by Humphrey Bogart, with a murky past who was left with a heart broken as the Germans were marching under the Arch de Triomphe. The clientele are all ex-pats from one European country or another, many of them jews persecuted by the Germans, waiting for passenger visas to freedom, perhaps in those closeted times a few gays as well. Into the club walks Ilsa, the girl that jilted Rick by not showing up at the train station. She is ably played by Ingrid Bergman. She is accompanied by her husband played by Paul Henreid whom she presumed had been killed in a prisoner of war camp while she was in Paris. A husband who is part of the underground and needs a favor from Rick. 

     Joining them in Rick's nightclub was a haughty German major, played with oleagic menace by Conrad Veidt ( in real life a strong anti-fascist).  He is accompanied by an attachment of troops in all of their menacing fascist ways. You could not tell if the German soldiers were over-playing the role, because, like Republicans today, they had no sense of internal control. Major Strasser is looking to cut off the trade of tourist visa's, a trade with which Rick had some familiarity,  and to send a few Jews to work camps for the fatherland. Many of the actors in the film were from the very conquered countries that they were portraying, many of them also Jews. Only three of the cast were from the USA, Bogart, Dooley Wilson (Sam), and Joy page (Bulgarian refugee, Annina Brandel). As Major Strasser is collecting his winnings at the Roulette table the soldiers strike up an acapella version of a patriotic German song, loud and raucous from drink. Rick's patrons are looking nervously around the nightclub, unsure what to do but united in their distaste. The band strikes up a rousing version of La Marsellaise and are soon joined by all of the patrons singing with enough passion to drown out the Nazis and quiet their fears.

     That was it! That is the feeling i had when i found out Measure 2 went down to a crushing defeat. That feeling that raised the hair on my neck, that lifted my spirits, that made me know that there was hope. We may not withstand defeat in the November 8 elections. But that win inspires me, as it does all of us who can be described by the rejuvinated facists in this country as 'woke'. Like the landscape that is shaken by the lightning, we have been charged by the power of this moment. There will be more such moments. And each of these moments will enliven the hope lying just beneath the surface.

     Those desperate people in Rick's had made a choice when they still had the opportunity. A choice many of their European friends would wait too long to make. Ilsa and her husband, Victor Laslo were exercising a choice, too. A desperate choice that required Ilsa to reveal her time in Paris with Rick to her husband, before she was notified that Victor was alive. Victor had made the choice to put that behind him to get travel visa's for him and Ilsa so she could be safe in America and he could go back to the underground. And on that night they, along with the assembled patrons had made the choice to drown out the detestable Nazi's with the French national anthem, no longer honored by the Vichy government established of their conquerors. The word was not used in that far-off time, but everyone of them chose to demonstrate that they were pro-choice.

     With this essay, and the flash of lightning that emboldened me, I am choosing to call the Kansas Republicans, and the axis of power they were allied with, religious nationalists, and white racists, what they demonstrably are, FASCISTS. Some of us, including me, have called Republicans fascists for many years, as the indicators of fascism outlined by Umberto Eco and others increased.  In earlier times we could be excused of being hyperbolic. That is no longer the case. That thought frightens me, as it should frighten more of us. But the tension is building among people who didn't wish to believe it or refused to believe it before. Kansas is the proof of that idea. People are starting to fight back. Some will seek refuge in other states. Some will join the underground to bring the struggle to those turning us into an autocratic government with the facade of democracy. Much like Russia under Putin has become. The very thing Russia wished to impose on Ukraine. They are fighting back. We are fighting back. Women in Afghanistan are fighting back. The forces trying to take away freedoms we had grown comfortable with are starting to learn that their hold is tenuous. Viva La Revolution.