See It Again, Sam

What Waters? We're In The Desert, Where The Fundamental Things Apply.

Guess I'm a lot older than I remember. "Who is the most famous person you've ever met, etc.?" ask the memes. For me, it's Ingrid Bergman. But I didn't remember this until just a few years ago. 

Sure, I knew her as Humphrey Bogart's lost love from the wartime classic Casablanca, which my college friends and I would troop off to see in trench coats and fedoras, waiting on the edge of our seats to shout "Round up the usual suspects!" And then toasting all women within earshot afterword with a sly "Here's looking at you, kid!"

But that was about it, until a few years ago when my mom sent me a package of memorabilia that included souvenirs from a field trip I'd taken to Washington, DC back in junior high. The purpose of the trip was to see the nation's capital, and I am sure we did. But all I can clearly remember is this: falling in with a band of ruffians on the bus trip down, who kindly took me under their wing and introduced me to a world of substances and experiences that all came crashing down when I was caught red handed on the final day launching a hotel prank, and the buddies who had put me up to it were suddenly nowhere to be found.

My punishment was to be shackled to a chaperone for the rest of the trip. That night, we went to see a play at the Kennedy Center that was starring-- my chaperone kindly explained -- a film actress my parents would surely know. She'd been very famous back in the 40's and 50's, until she got herself into some scandal that got her banned from the US--denounced on the floor of the Senate just a few blocks away. But now she was taking this role in preparation for her Hollywood comeback. Sounds good, I remember thinking, and never remembered to tell my parents in my mindless obsession with things teenaged.

But something suddenly fell out of my head all these years later, as I turned over the contents of that package from my mom. It was the name of the play--The Constant Wife. I have no idea why I remembered this, but I searched online, and found it had been playing at the Kennedy Center the exact dates of that field trip nearly half a century earlier, starring Ingrid Bergman.  And when I saw her older but unmistakable face on the playbill, it all came rushing back into my head--the thunderous applause as she walked out on that stage, lights upon her as she stood basking in a joy and nostalgia so thick that people were brushing it back from their faces, and the curtain calls without end, amen.

Yes, she really did exist. Yes, I really was there not ten rows back. And yes, the next year she really did go on win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Murder on the Orient Express.

All that is far behind us now. Before us stretches a bloodthirsty mindlessness that has metastasized everything American into an evil far more potent than what was overrunning the world back in 1942, when Casablanca was filmed, when Bogie was the toughest guy in cinema, when every camera was in love with Ingrid, and we were on the eve of another year of an endless war whose outcome was still very much in question.

Many were afraid to speak out then ("I stick my neck out for nobody!"), as many are now.  That's what Evil does-- it scares the shit out of you. But eternity is never kind to fence-sitters. Last time it got to the point where they literally started blowing up entire cities. Now, with even deadlier weapons available, do you really think it's all going to just blow over? You're not even fooling yourself at this point. You've got to get in the fight.

Not that I hold myself up as some kind of example. But I am grateful-- and that's a start. Grateful to my parents who paid for that trip. Grateful to those guys who got me into trouble. Grateful to that chaperone who gave me some edification. Grateful to my mom for not chucking my stuff. Grateful to Ingrid Bergman for returning all those years later to a city that had cancelled her, to an audience that still adored her, for her role in a movie she never really thought was such a big deal.

Gratitude is something you can't have enough of in this age of grievance, when imagined slights become legal grounds for silencing, imprisoning, and disposing of those you don't like. It's a cognitive disorder that affects everyone who's tasted of the forbidden fruit, when your knowledge-- but not your wisdom-- suddenly knows no bounds. 

And knows no cure except for stark reminders of your own disposability.  I've experienced that this past year, and am grateful beyond words for people whose wisdom knows no bounds--family and physicians, neighbors and nurses, co-workers and friends -- during my battle with cancer. Doctors say it's down but not out. And it will be back.

Kind of like this cognitive cancer that's corrupted our institutions to justify the silencing, arrest, imprisonment and now--per Congressional testimony of Ivy League presidents-- genocide of others for imagined slights and ethnic non-conformity.

We thought we'd driven a stake through the heart of that one in 1945. But here it is, like a bloodthirsty vampire, back from its grave. And tough-talking Americans, who’ve been invading other people's countries for the last eighty years, are suddenly paralyzed with fear at defending their own. Nowhere to be found, like my buddies all those years ago. Leaving a ragtag resistance to fight at hopeless odds against globalist domination and control.

Take anything--your health, your freedoms, your security-- for granted, and that's how it goes. The fundamental things apply...before you even know it's happening.

If you've never seen Casablanca, you should. And if you have, now might be a great time to see it again, Sam. Here on the eve of another year of endless war whose outcome is still very much in doubt. You may be surprised to learn that there was never a screenplay for Casablanca. It's loosely based on an unproduced play called Everybody Comes To Rick's, but the film pretty much wrote itself, with the right people in the right places in real time. Nobody knew how it was going to end until the day it was shot.

But what a shot in the arm it was for those who were in the fight. And for those whose boundless knowledge kept them perched upon the fence—blowing with the prevailing wind like Captain Renault--it served as a kind of sign from heaven. A sign that something much bigger than Destiny was taking a hand here. Something even bigger than the pronouns of a few people whose problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Because—- and you must remember this—while history may not repeat, eternity does. And always will. As time goes by.

Harvey Oxenhorn, is a cybersecurity consultant, founder of Malwords Weekly, and author of the upcoming book, The Atrocity Algorithm, How The Media Became The Enemy of The People. He writes The Five Stages of Unf*ck, Red Pill Journey to January 2.0. , also on Substack. Follow him on Gettr, Gab, @HarveyOxenhorn, and on Twitter @HarvOxenhorn