“Country club Republicans” was once the description of choice for those conservatives more concerned with their own pedigree and status than implementing policies that benefit the people. RINOs, “Republicans in name only,” is now more common but a new term from Paul du Quenoy at American Greatness is far more accurate.
“Vichycons” – Vichy conservatives – applies to those soi-disant conservatives comfortable with conditions under the Biden Junta, what Angelo Codevilla calls an oligarchy – after serious election irregularities that Conrad Black helpfully outlines. The Vichy reference goes back to the 1940s and the 1942 film Casablanca dramatizes the parallels.
Paris has fallen to the German National Socialist invaders, and their puppet Gen. Pétain governs from Vichy. From Nazi-occupied countries across Europe, people flee to French-controlled Morocco, where a measure of liberty still prevails. Still, the gendarmes demand to see papers, criminals lurk on every hand, and life is cheap. That may sound familiar to Americans in 2021, but there’s more to it.
In Casablanca, police captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) entertains the Nazi delegation headed by Major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt). Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) has shown up in Casablanca, and Strasser demands that Laszlo not escape to America via Lisbon. Captain Renault duly collaborates.
American Rick Blaine (Bogart) operates the Café Américain, a thriving nightclub and casino. One night Major Strasser and his squad commandeer the piano and croon a German fight song. Victor Laszlo counters by having the house band strike up “La Marseillaise.” The French patrons join in with gusto, the Germans give up, and the tearful Yvonne (Madeleine LeBeau) shouts “Vive la France!”
In 2021 America, the addled Biden is the figurehead for leftist squads who despise the “Star Spangled Banner” and hate the nation it represents. Like the Vichycons du Quenoy exposes, Joe Biden supports efforts to teach American children they are all racists. Biden also allows U.S. embassies to fly Black Lives Matter flags and banners, a move that traces back to the Communist Party USA, which held that blacks were a separate nation and not Americans.
According to the “1619 Project” now colonizing schools, the United States was established for the sole purpose of perpetuating slavery. In these dismal conditions, singing the “Star Spangled Banner,” flying the Stars and Stripes, and chanting “USA! USA!” become acts of bold resistance.
As Victor Lazlo recalls, Rick Blaine has some experience fighting in Spain and running guns to Ethiopia. Trouble is, Rick is now the only cause that interests Rick, who sticks out his neck for nobody. Rick begins to change when Major Strasser shuts down the Café Américain. Under the Vichy regime, things just aren’t going to be the same, so Rick must make a plan.
Instead of using the coveted “letters of transit” for himself, Rick gives them to Victor Laszlo and his wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). Before they board the plane to Lisbon, Victor tells Rick, “Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win.” Victor was right, but in 2021 America things aren’t so clear.
“We’ll always have Paris,” Rick tells Ilsa, and one night they got some of it back. In 2021 it’s not clear that Americans will get back the free and prosperous nation they once knew. Americans can flee to Florida and Texas, but there’s really no place to run and hide. In these conditions, the choices are clear.
Americans can be Vichycons and collaborate with Joe Biden, the menacing Gen. Mark Milley, and Comeytose FBI boss Christopher Wray. They can bow down to white coat supremacist duce Anthony Fauci, who now claims that to criticize him is to criticize science itself.
The more difficult choice is to take a stand for freedom, clean elections, the rule of law and constitutional rights. The hour is late and the correlation of forces unfavorable, but maybe our side can win. To adapt what Rick told Ilsa at the airport, if Americans don’t join the fight they will regret it. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”
Meanwhile, du Quenoy’s Vichycon of choice is David French but he mentions David Frum, the Hillary Clinton voter who wants people to trust the media because of its mistakes. Du Quenoy might have included George Will, who confirms that collaboration started with the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.
He cast Islamic terrorism at Ford Hood as “workplace violence,” passed off a murderous attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as a protest over a video, and on his watch the economy barely had a pulse. After all that, and much more, George Will hailed “Barack Obama’s studied elegance,” a contrast to Donald Trump’s “visceral vulgarity.”
Once hailed as the best writer on any subject, George Will now compares January 6, 2021 with September 11, 2001, causing his friend Conrad Black to wonder if Will had “taken complete leave of his senses.” That’s a common condition among Vichycons loyal to the Biden Junta.
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