Trump is a CABARET Old Chum

By Ken Sheetz

Elizabeth and I were thinking about CABARET and why Bob Fosse’s 1972 masterpiece feels so familiar today.

Not because America is Nazi Germany. It isn’t. America is it’s own thing. The Nazi after all came here in the 30s to learn genocide from us. The more interesting comparison is how ordinary life continues while something profoundly abnormal slowly becomes normal.

Berlin, 1931.

People are drinking, dancing, falling in love, falling out of love, chasing careers, having sex, worrying about money.

And the Nazis are coming.

At first, almost in the background.

Drip.

A Nazi gets tossed out of the Kit Kat Klub.

Drip.

Brownshirts appear on the streets.

Drip.

Violence becomes more common.

Drip.

People begin adjusting to things that would have horrified them a year earlier.

And through it all stands Joel Grey’s extraordinary Emcee.

At the beginning he’s funny, filthy, mischievous and seemingly untouchable. Politics? That’s happening somewhere outside.

Inside the Kit Kat Klub, everything can be turned into entertainment.

Sex is entertainment. Poverty is entertainment. Antisemitism becomes material. Politics becomes material.

Even fear can get a laugh.

But the Emcee is also our guide. As the movie darkens, he darkens with it. The jokes become anti-semetic. The decadence stops feeling liberating and starts feeling desperate.

And then there’s Liza Minnelli’s Sally Bowles.

Sally survives through fantasy.

She’s going to be a star. Everything is fabulous. Tomorrow will somehow work itself out. Don’t think too hard about consequences because there’s another song to sing and another party tonight.

Even when pregnancy forces reality directly into her life, Sally ultimately retreats back toward the only world she knows how to control: performance.

That’s what makes her heartbreaking.

Sally isn’t evil.

She isn’t stupid.

She’s avoiding reality because reality hurts.

And while Sally is trying desperately to keep the party going, history couldn’t care less.

Then comes that terrifying beer-garden scene.

A beautiful young man begins singing. Slowly we discover he’s Hitler Youth.

One person joins him.

Then another.

Then another.

Soon nearly everyone is standing.

And suddenly something that had seemed like a collection of fringe lunatics looks like the future.

That is the slow drip.

And here’s Fosse’s final genius.

We return to the Kit Kat Klub.

The Emcee is still there.

The entertainment continues.

But look into the distorted mirror behind him.

Nazis are sitting in the audience.

They aren’t outside anymore.

They aren’t the troublemakers being thrown out.

They own the room.

And the Emcee bows.

That’s the part of CABARET that haunts me and Elizabeth today. I had nightmares about it last night. Democracy rarely disappears with somebody flipping a giant switch marked FASCISM: ON.

It’s more often normalization.

Drip.

Something previously unthinkable happens.

Drip.

We debate whether we’re overreacting.

Drip.

Something worse happens.

Drip.

Yesterday’s outrage becomes today’s background noise.

Meanwhile we work. Shop. Stream movies. Check our phones. Argue online. Walk the dog.

We become Sally Bowles.

Life is a cabaret, old chum.

And we become the Emcee too, turning everything—even danger—into another spectacle to consume.

That’s why the lesson of CABARET isn’t that we should call everybody we disagree with a Nazi.

It’s almost the opposite.

Pay attention before labels like that become necessary.

Protect elections. Protect courts. Protect due process. Protect peaceful dissent. Protect the freedom of people you can’t stand.

And occasionally turn off the goddamn music and look around the room.

Because democracy probably won’t send us a notification:

YOUR DEMOCRACY EXPIRES TOMORROW. CLICK HERE TO RENEW.

The warning may be much quieter.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Until one day you look up—

and the audience is wearing nothing but Trump 2028 hats.

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