These are tough times for those of us who actually kinda, you know, liked America the way it was pre-2009 and didn’t fancy seeing it fundamentally transformed, as President Obama promised. Alas, he’s kept his promise.
Professor Jacobson has been steadfast in refusing to capitulate.
I have not given in to all the doom and gloom, although it’s hard not to. There is a deliberate effort to declare the Republican Party, conservatives, and the Tea Party movement over. Operation Demoralize never stops.
Yes, demoralization is like rust. So how do we respond?
It is an oddity of English that moralize is not the opposite of demoralize. The opposite of demoralize is inspire.
As tempting as it is sometimes to compare our inept and feckless Republican leaders to Marshal Pétain and his Vichy toadies, that only highlights how unwarranted the demoralization is.
Because for all our despair and disappointment, life in America 2013 is hardly comparable to life in Casablanca 1942. Those who were caught in hegemonic limbo never knew whether today was the day they’d be rounded up as one of the “usual suspects” and pay the ultimate price as an enemy of the German state.
Yet even while the movie Casablanca was being shot through the summer of ’42, the Allied invasion of North Africa was being plotted, culminating that November in Morocco’s liberation.
So here, be inspired. And sing loud—louder than they do. We’re all Victor Laszlo now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTsg9i6lvqU
(By the way, today is the 70th anniversary of Casablanca’s release.)

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The latest shot across the bow is the new AP poll declaring that, by golly, Republicans have decided to stop being haters where illegal immigrants – er, undocumented, uh.. whatever – are concerned, and are now hap-hap-happy to enfold them within this great new country of ours.
Suspicious of this, I googled “republicans illegal immigrants” and found nothing but this poll, regurgitated by every news outlet across the nation. I stopped looking after 10 – 10! – pages. NOTHING but this poll in response to those words.
So… yeah. Full court press: on.
Vive la Liberté!
I think we need a bumper sticker: “I am Viktor Laszlo”
Victor Lazlo was a beta-male who was cuckolded and then given back his life by the wheedling and cajoling of his wife and her lover.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you that you would pull Lazlo out of the movie as one of the heroes.
Here’s your movie quotation, monsieur.
He still got on the plane with Ingrid Bergman. I could live with that.
That’s what makes you and Victor beta males. By the way, the movie never tells us if after getting on the plane Victor got any.
Your lack of imagination is most telling!
Bon chance, Monsieur!
🙂
hahah love it.
Anybody who was as big a target as Viktor, plus caused as much trouble in as many countries for as long as he did, plus who would openly confront a group of German officers in a bar, is not ‘beta male’.
Or have you done things far more ballsy than that in your life? I haven’t.
“P’fessor, it looks like this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!”
Sorry – I don’t know Czech, so I can only write it in English.
Já jsem Viktor Laszlo
Jak Se Mas!
OK, so now off to create a bumper sticker – anybody recommend any sites for it?
LI recently linked to this report:
And the President on whose watch this happened was reelected while the Republicans waged one of the most brain-dead campaigns of modern times.
Inspiration is always welcome, but what’s really needed is competence.
Every now and then when I think there is no hope … or I’m feeling down or sorry for myself … I think of my old friend. After all he’d been through he was a cheerful gentleman to the end. This man will always be a great inspiration to me.
http://www.humboldt.edu/rescuers/book/Chlup/federstory1.html
Thank you for this deeply moving reminder of the courage, decency and love people can have towards one another when it would be easier to look the other way–the acts of individuals in thought, word and deed truly matter, don’t they?
“Listen! Our national anthem, the Mayonnaise! The troops must be dressing…”
— Duck Soup
our inept and feckless Republican leaders
What do they see themselves as?
that was a perfect analogy for today.
and it cheered me up
I do disagree with the statement that our GOP leaders are all inept and feckless. I see some courageous and decisive leaders emerging,
that also cheers me up
We’re Americans, our govorment isn’t,
Americans can do anything and we’ve been doing it for centuries.
The Japs pissed us off and they are dissappearing
The Germans pissed us off and their burdened with europe.
And right now the blacks and Kommiecrats are pissing me off
Oh? And what do you propose to do with the blacks?
Easy
No mnore special privileges like Affirmative Action
Welfare ends 5 years later & then no more including Food Stamps.
All welfare benefits taxed as income
That all employers have the right to hire & fire reguardless of race, religion or perversetion at their discretion
Standardized prison sentence…you do crime A you get crimes A’s punishment
Churches have the right to preach politics not just black churches
All MFM media will be required to report race of perp
Why is any of your above expressly directed toward The Blacks?
the Marseillaise scene from Casablanca is an interesting coincidence. I teach a freshman world history survey, and I played the Marseillaise from youtube with French and English text. I then talked about France sometimes being a beacon for oppressed people, and played the Casablanca scene. I think one or two students got it.
Right on and let’s go forward with all due speed, deliberately aiming at tearing down, ramming down, Obama’s efforts to Socialize this country. Obama has declared a political war against Conservatives of all strips and while his “war” analogy is ridiculous, his tactics are chilling and especially because many Conservatives don’t like to engage with a contentious foe.
So, let’s do whatever we can to prevent his statist Socialist goals from being achieved.
BTW: During the 1989 celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille, the way the Marseillaise was sung indicated that the spirit of old revolutionary France was kaput and not because of its wars with Germany. That scene in Casablanca is thrilling to watch.
“We’re all Victor Laszlo now” Exactly !!!!
I can’t help feeling a sense of enormous outrage, disgust, and anger at what this tyrant Obama is allowed to do, to get away with, at the expense of all patriotic American citizens, because the public has so indoctrinated to this tyrant’s cult of personality, his marxist islamist ideology and agenda, that this Nation Republic is allowed to down in flames.
With the exceptions of a few individual politicians, is there no one in the GOP party leadership with the courage to stand up against Obama and his fascist liberal marxist islamist regime to lead them in a political revolt, and say enough is enough, no more !!
This is where we are at, the occupation of our Nation’s power and authority govt in Washington DC. by America’s enemies.
quote-
“The Republic was not established by cowards, and cowards will not preserve it.”
~ Elmer Davis~
Thus We the People must now be the Victor Lazlos’s of our time, for our Nation Republic.
Beside Obama’s dismantling of our US Military to defend our US National Security interests abroad, Obama is now positioning the US Military against it’s own Nation, and the very people it is established to protect. On top of his cutting everything and anything he can from the Military active duty and retired Military, from benefits, to pat allowances, to raising healthcare premiums, etc, etc, while he redistributes the American tax payer money to his crony friends, allies, and overseas entities, ie; our enemies abroad.
This is about as Orwellian as can get, but is now reality.
Thus, in defying and fighting this tyranny of oppression we are now forced to endure, the American People are now all Victor Lazlo’s in the fight to regain, return, and restore America back to a Nation Republic and it’s govt Of the People, By the People, For the People”.
Sorry for not proof reading my prior post.. I am just so angered and outraged !!!
Viktor Laszlo?
As long as we are bandying about fictional resistance characters, make mine John Connor.
So long as they’re fictional resistance characters, why not Barack Obama?
Didn’t anyone notice that Victor Laszlo lost? He was Czech. They had a very happy independence … in 1991. He flew off to America as an escape from the Nazis because he couldn’t work in Europe anymore, not even France. So he went to the safety and distance of the US to write pamphlets for a country that really didn’t need it. I mean, that’s a rockin’ role model if you want to lose with a square jaw and world-weary smirk.
Sigh. I am cynical today.
[…] individual rights, entrepreneurship, freedom, and liberty are not so crazy after all. ‘Operation Demoralize’ doesn’t work when we aren’t isolated. We aren’t isolated when we have a community […]