Wearing Our Underwear on the Outside
Woody Allen’s fifth movie was made in 1971, the year I graduated from high school, left Rome to work at Case Western Reserve University for the summer and eventually wound up bumming a ride to Ithaca to start Cornell fifty years ago. Can you name Woody’s first four movies? His first three (What’s Up Pussycat?, What’s Up Tiger Lily? and Casino Royale) didn’t really star Woody, but as the writer, he was given the opportunity for cameo+ roles. So his first real starring role was in 1969 in Take The Money and Run, the life of ne’er-do-well petty thief Virgil Starkwell. Who can ever forget, the bank robbery where he hands the teller a note and then debates with her and her boss what it says, “I have a gub?” It was impossible not to find Woody Allen hilarious in those days. And then came his fifth movie, where he honed his leading role as Fielding Mellish. Come on, is Woody Allen more Virgil Starkwell or Fielding Mellish? That fifth movie was, of course none other than Bananas.
Bananas was the quintessential banana dictatorship movie in a revolutionary time when Fidel Castro was in full swing and Salvador Allende, a communist, was in charge of Chile before Augusto Pinochet threw him out of office in a coup in 1973 that also cost Allende his life. Latin American political turmoil was no joke. I’ve been on the tarmac in Havana in 1959 (granted, I was five years old) under the gaze of a bearded Kalashnikov-toting rebel. I actually had the opportunity to meet Augusto Pinochet in 1985 when he was in his grandfatherly brown-suit stage of his dictatorship and the hats with the egg salad on them had long since been put away and were desperately trying to be forgotten. What couldn’t be forgotten were the thousands of rebellious youth that were buried under the stadium steps after they were disappeared. So, what a perfect time in 1971 for Woody Allen to write a great banana republic comedy where Fielding Mellish finds himself in a revolution and inadvertently gets in with the winning rebels. He was a man with no political convictions and he finds himself in San Marcos (funny that I live in the next town over from San Marcos, California) cow-towing to the new dictator.
In addition to the new power-mad dictator declaring the official state language of San Marcos to be Swedish, he insists that everyone has to change their underwear every half hour and must wear it on the outside so it can be checked by the authorities. Funny stuff that launched an 80-film career for Woody. Along the way after his marriage to Mia Farrow, Woody got crosswise with the female universe due to his own proclivities, which I will not defend. But he was one helluva comedy writer and a damn fine comedic actor in his day as well. It seems he was also omniscient about the American political scene, only fifty years out.
Today, Donald J. Trump finally did what we all suspected he would do, but prayed it would not be so or it would not be tolerated. After four years of the American people and the entire world adjusting to the Trump brand of idiocy and outrageousness, they and we are apparently immune to it all and cease to be shocked by his lies and horrendous actions. Today’s headlines are all about the fact that Trump has now made it clear to the world that he has no intention of allowing a peaceful transition of power if he loses the upcoming election. He is jockeying to fill the RBG seat on the Supreme Court specifically because he knows that regardless of the outcome of the election he plans to contest it on the grounds that it was not legitimate. The game plan is now getting laid bare. He plans to have individual state legislatures declare that their state’s electoral process is riddled with fraud (mostly from mail-in ballots) and then have those legislatures, which are heavily controlled by Republican caucuses, pick electors for the Electoral College and effectively dispose of the popular vote. It will be a massive nationwide disenfranchisement of the American people, specifically for the benefits of allowing Trump to steal the election.
Even Woody Allen couldn’t have dreamed up this script. It is too absurd to be believable. Before we know it, we will all be speaking Swedish and wearing our underwear on the outside.
OK, I will declare early that I do not believe for a moment that America will allow this to happen to it. The reactionary right that represents Trump’s base is still only about or less than a third of the electorate, which means less than 15% of the population. We have all been raised to respect due process and peaceful transitions. Learning how to gracefully lose is as American as learning how to be a winner. No one likes it, but we have always understood that the alternative would be very bad for us in the long run. The ultimate path to anarchy and a break-down of democracy runs right through this transitional issue. And enough people, including Republicans know that and know that they cannot allow this to happen. I know what you’re thinking….who would have thought that things would ever go this far so why expect that they will stop here. The simple answer is that everything has its limits and the closer we get to dismantling and tossing out our last norms, the more people will be forced to push back. Really.
I have faith. I have faith in most (not all, but most) of the Republican Congressmen and Senators that they have their limit. I have faith that the Federal machinery, from the Justice Department and State Department to the CDC have been pushed as far as they will allow themselves to be pushed. Ultimately, and most importantly, I believe that the military will protect us and keep Trump from running roughshod on the country to preserve his power and keep himself from spending the rest of his days in one courtroom after another. That is what my Chrystal Ball tells me…a year from now Donald Trump will be where Bernie Madoff found himself. His family will fracture and each appendage will work to save itself through disavowal of complicity. His acolytes will lay low and quietly reemerge when they sense the coast is clear.
The only one who will be wearing his underwear on the outside will be Donald Trump as he pulls a chapter out of the Vincent Gigante mob boss handbook and declare himself mentally incompetent. The underwear will be a nice touch to remind us that he was never really serious, right?