A few nights ago I was sleepless and up late so I turned on the TV and came across an old movie called Cabaret on a Japanese station complete with kanji subtitles. It was I think a Broadway musical that was made into a movie about 1972. The title song was a big hit at the time and really is the only thing I knew about the film. It’s a catchy tune.
What good is sitting alone in your room, come hear the music play,
Life is a cabaret old chum, come to the cabaret.
I watched the movie but by the end I decided I wished I hadn’t bothered. It was a bawdy romp about the decadent life of burlesque in Berlin in the 1930s just as the Nazis were coming to power in Germany. The plot centers on a love triangle between a woman and two men, one of whom was very wealthy, which hints at, but doesn’t reveal until the end, its bisexual nature. Woven into their story is the cabaret where the woman works that features a chorus line led by a gay transvestite. Its performances are mixed between scenes throughout the flick. I’m not familiar with the public reaction to the movie at the time, but it would seem to me that it must have been quite risqué in 1972.
A subplot in the film revolves around a man in love with a woman who cares for him enough to reject him because she’s Jewish and knows what trouble it would cause him in the future. The nature of the times is shown with short clips interspersed throughout of Nazis harassing the woman, and breaking into Jewish shops and homes.
The one redeeming quality of the film, if there is one, is that it shows the total disregard of the wealthy elite and German society in general for the plight of the Jews and the morass that the nation was falling into under the Nazis. They debauched themselves at the Cabaret totally unaware of the world falling apart around them and the nightmare the Third Reich was leading them into. It serves as a warning to us.
There probably isn’t a better illustration anywhere of what has been going on for the last seven years in the Obama Administration. While millions of illegal immigrants come across our border with Mexico bringing drugs and crime, Obama piously says the border is secure and plays golf. While Obama leads the nation into a moral abyss with gay marriage and abortion his lapdog worshippers rush to defend the debauchery that will destroy our society. While ISIS rises to become the major terrorist threat in the world Obama brushes it off and plays more golf. When Islamic Jihadists invade Europe and blow up Belgium he goes to a baseball game with a communist dictator declaring ISIS is not an “existential threat.” Two days later with Europe falling apart he tangos in Buenos Aires with a former Playboy model.
While conservatives decry the horror of abortion and the moral decline of our culture liberals often compare us to Nazis. The truth is the left and its support for everything wicked and ungodly is the better comparison. While everything decent in society is torn down and the world crumbles Obama and his ilk, like the Cabaret in Nazi Germany, party, the blind leading the blind into oblivion. No worries, Mate, let’s tango.
