I USED DIALOG FROM A SCENE IN THE FILM CASABLANCA this week in my Finger Lakes Times column to illustrate the idea that people need to be especially vigilant these days because evil lurks. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say people with evil intentions. Either way, it’s palpable. And read Project 2025 by the Heritage Foundation, to see we face a danger of fascism in America. Yup, right here, detailed in my column at the end of this screed.
The parallels between the 1942 romantic-drama and today’s dangers in America jump right off the screen and out of a book I have. The book contains every line of dialog from the movie along with photos of the characters as they said them. It was a gift years ago from another journalist & Casablanca aficionado. We often traded lines back and forth in our newsroom. Yes, it irritated our colleagues. A lot. Part of the fun.
In my column I quoted a Humphrey Bogart line “I bet they’re asleep all over America.” It was a message to isolationists in the U.S. who did not want us in World War II, even after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It takes some serious devotion to being an isolationist to overlook Pearl Harbor.
A MAJOR ELEMENT OF THE FILM is how the German military was mopping up every nation’s armed forces with relative ease, creating a huge community of refugees, fleeing the Third Reich. Refugees? Yes, fleeing an enemy and their home nations whose economies had tanked largely thanks to the German invasions and destruction.
Then we have something in the film called “Letters of Transit.” These allowed people move freely, even with the Gestapo watching everything. So if you were a refugee, a letter of transit was your ticket out of Casablanca and to the free world, specifically America. You needed a letter to freely travel at all. How unthinkable in America today. Oh wait! What about those pesky laws in Texas and other states restricting the movements of pregnant women? And that’s right NOW, before Project 2025 could rear its ugly head.
THE ENTIRE FILM IS A PAEAN TO FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY, and delivers a stinging indictment of the German war machine, occupation of conquered nations, the concentration camps, fascism and a maniacal goal to rule the world.
When the final Casablanca credits roll, it’s clear the fight against the Nazis will continue. But we know how that turned out. The Nazis and the bad guys lost. Democracy and freedom were saved.
Let’s hope the people who want to squash democracy are roundly defeated again.
Here’s Friday’s column from the Geneva, NY Finger Lakes Times:
They’re asleep all over America
By Michael J. Fitzgerald
Last week I attended a troubling national media teleconference about former U.S. President Trump's proposed immigration plan, a plan breathtaking in scope, potential impacts on people and threats to the national economy.
THE PLAN INCLUDES MASSIVE DEPORTATIONS and creation of large-scale detention camps, a freeze on existing legal immigration and punishing citizens and legal residents if they study or live with undocumented persons.
It’s hard to believe policies this abhorrent need to be taken seriously in the United States in 2024.
But we must. Tentacles of this kind of thinking and resulting actions could easily reach into the Finger Lakes.
BREATH-TAKING AND TROUBLING IS UNDERSTATED. Just consider the idea of large-scale detention camps. Have we forgotten what this nation did during World War II to Japanese-American citizens? Imagine a police presence today so pervasive and invasive that it had the authority to simply sweep into a community and round up citizens based on some political prerogative du jour? Or just the whim of a political opponent with police powers?
This is not hyperbole.
The teleconference led by immigration and legal experts was laser-focused on these radical immigration notions, part of long, detailed and at times inflammatory document by the Heritage Foundation called Project 2025. If you have not heard of or read about Project 2025, you should take a look. Immigration is only one sliver of a suggested remaking of America that could result in an America we might not recognize.
ADMITTEDLY, some people might like a U.S. without a viable Environmental Protection Agency. Or where public schools are even more starved for funds so monies can go to religious-based educational institutions. Or support removal of career civil service employees if their personal politics don't align with narrow, government-mandated doctrinaire limits. Be careful what you wish for.
And wherever you fall on the political-cultural spectrum, please pay attention to these proposals in Project 2025.
The column headline today – "They are asleep all over America" – comes from dialog in the 1942 film "Casablanca," my all-time favorite movie. The romantic drama is set during World War II in the North African city of Casablanca, at the time controlled by the Nazi-sympathizing Vichy government of France. Much of the tension in the film is between the Nazi occupiers and an American night club owner played by actor Humphrey Bogart.
Even if you have seen the film, watch it again. It's about genuine idealism, humanity and support for the concept of democracy. It draws a clear contrast with the Nazis officers and soldiers: murderous, evil, the enemies of freedom and democratic ideals.
In the push and pull of the plot, a wistfully inebriated Bogart tells his friend Sam. “I bet they're asleep in New York; I bet they're asleep all over America.” He's not talking about people catching a few "zzzzs." Many viewers and film critics saw it as wakeup call aimed at isolationist Americans who didn't support the war or understand the ominous threat the Nazis posed to freedom everywhere.
THESE DAYS I WORRY A LOT THAT PEOPLE ARE ASLEEP, or simply numbed by the headlines and stories about the astounding U.S. Supreme Court corruption, Congressional political chicanery, outright wrongdoing and any number of horrific events. It makes it easier to simply ignore outrageous statements and proposals like Project 2025 or other such notions.
Ignorance may be bliss. But putting people in concentration camps, like the ones the Nazis had in World War II for enemies and/or perceived inferior races is not a bliss I want to live with or be any part of.
Wake up and pay attention America, please.
Fitzgerald has worked at six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for two news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and the Pacific Northwest. You can email him atMichael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his websites at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com and michaeljfitzgerald.substack.com.
Excellent!