Isn't Life Wonderful?

In early 1924, D.W. Griffith, the greatest of all silent film directors, led a cast and crew to Berlin, where they made what is now considered one of the greatest of all films: the ironically titled Isn’t Life Wonderful? The film, based on a short story by British soldier/writer Geoffrey Moss, starred Neil Hamilton (who 40+ years later would play police commissioner Gordon on Batman) and Griffith’s protégé, the long-forgotten Carol Dempster. Isn’t Life Wonderful? takes place in real-time: the post “Great War” ‘20s, when hundreds of thousands of refugees (such as the film’s main characters, “Inga” and “Paul” flocked to Germany in search of food and shelter. Historically, this was the time when the Weimar Republic was beset by hyperinflation, caused almost entirely by Germany’s staggering ($33.3 billion) debt it owed the victorious Americans, Brits and French. The inflation that held the Republic in a strangle hold for several years was unlike anything ever seen before . . . or since. As an example, a loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 Marks by late 1923; by November 1923, one US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 (that’s a mind-bending four trillion, two hundred ten billion, five hundred million) German Marks. Paper money reached such a level that Weimar issued 50 trillion Mark paper. This is the Germany that Griffith chose to shoot his picture in.

And we kvetch and call for a radical change in government when the inflation rate stands at 6.04% (as it did yesterday)?

Griffith, ever a master at telescoping dire reality into a few feet of celluloid, captures this monstrous hyperinflation in the scene pictured above. In long shot, we see dozens of families pushing wheelbarrows laden with paper money to a bakery where there is already a long, long line. Then, camera pulling up closer and closer, we see the baker emerge from his place of business every 30 seconds, wiping off the chalk board that bears the price of a single loaf of bread. The figure gets larger and larger with each rewrite, as more and more starving families exit the line and go back to God knows where. This is the brutality and apocalyptical doom which led the common folk to demand to know precisely who was to blame, and the followers of the soon-to-be Führer only too happy to provide the answer: the Jews. From there, the slide to gruesome dictatorship was all but guaranteed.

Democracy is having a tough time all over the planet; from the world’s oldest (USA) to its largest (India) its newest and most raucous (Israel) to its least comprehensible (France), the forces of intolerance, bigotry and self-regarding defiance for the rule of law are making insomniacs of the masses. “How is it,” so many of us ask, “that minority political factions are increasingly capable of turning their warped version of reality into the law of the land? When was the last time democracy was attacked by so many bellicose bullies and would-be dictators?

We are all, of course, familiar with the scene here in the United States, the oldest of all democracies. Day in, day out, the former president, the MAGA and Clown-Car-Caucus, are stirring the pot and shifting attention to how much freedom their followers at the hands of “Woke” - the new way of saying “Commie Bastard.” They spend their time convincing them that they are losing their freedom to choose what their children should read, learn, see or hear; their ability to carry automatic weapons without registration . . . let alone education. And on and on. We are daily witness to the diabolical commands of the former Commander-in-Chief that if he is indicted in any of a number of state and/or federal cases, his followers must "protest, protest, protest” and further warning that should this happen, the American public should “be ready for potential death and destruction.” Say what you will about our former POTUS; he knows his supporters well.

In India, the world’s largest democracy, P.M. Narendra Modi has summarily disqualified M.P. Rahul Gandhi (the leader of the party opposing the current P.M.) from serving in that country’s Parliament, after a court found him guilty of defamation over his remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surname. Now mind you, Mr., Gandhi isn’t just some garden-variety member of Indian society; his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) was India’s first Prime Minister; his father Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991) who served as India’s 6th P.M., was assassinated by a member of the Tamil Tigers, a radical Sri Lankan separatist group, in 1991. In a sense, to be a Nehru/Gandhi in India, is the equivalent of being a Roosevelt or Kennedy in America. Rahul Gandhi, who has served 19 years in the Indian legislature, was removed after he was found guilty of defaming Modi’s surname in a 2019 case filed by a politician in the prime minister’s party. Gandhi was convicted on the defamation charge this week and sentenced by a court in Modi’s home state to two years imprisonment, which, under Indian law, allowed the parliamentary speaker to suspend him from politics. This is an unprecedented move; one which potentially fires an arrow into the heart of India’s democratic body politic. Without question, this is an earth shattering event. One simply does not disqualify a member of the Indian Parliament (especially one with Gandhi’s familial roots) simply because he attacks the P.M. It is an example of anti-freedom that is all but unsurpassed in that country’s history. Needless to say, many people in India are up in arms and accusing P.M. Modi and his judiciary of engaging in anti-democratic actions.

In France, protests involving upwards of 1.3 million people (out of a population of about 2.2 million) have become a fixture of Parisian nightlife after the French government rammed through a pension bill last week raising the retirement age to 64, from 62, without a vote in the lower house of Parliament. The fact that President Macron did this without a parliamentary vote is highly unusual, and highly unlike how things are normally done in France. The wild protests are part of a larger trend that has seen previously peaceful demonstrations growing increasingly menacing as the government refuses to back down on the pension overhaul. This past Thursday, nearly 1,000 fires were lit by protesters, about 440 police officers and firefighters were injured, and about the same number of demonstrators were arrested throughout France, according to the French interior minister. Those huge protests have shifted in character over the past week. They have become angrier and, in some cities, more violent — especially after nightfall.

These protests have been less about the fury felt over the raising of the retirement age to 64 from 62, and more about Mr. Macron and the way he rammed the law through Parliament without a full vote. Finally, they have broadened into something approaching a constitutional crisis. As a result of all this, the postponement of a state visit to France by King Charles III became almost inevitable; the optics of President Emmanuel Macron dining with the British monarch at the Château de Versailles as Paris burned were not just bad; they would have looked like a brazen provocation to the blue-collar workers leading a wave of demonstrations and strikes across the country. One must remember that the country’s far right, in the person of parliamentarian Marine LePen’s National Rally, which consistently blames France’s educational, social and economic problems on Macon’s immigration policies and left-wing predilections. Sound familiar?

Then there is the Middle East’s sole Democracy, Israel, which has seen tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of people taking to the streets protesting Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s changes to the Israeli Judicial system . . . all seemingly for the sole purpose of keeping him free of legal liabilities so long as he holds office. For the past weeks, Prime Minister Netanyahu - sounding more and more like former President Donald Trump than David Ben Gurion or even Ariel Sharon - has defied critics of his plan to weaken Israel’s highest court.

Earlier today (March 26), An Israeli good governance group asked the country’s Supreme Court to punish Netanyahu for allegedly violating a conflict of interest agreement meant to prevent him from dealing with the country’s judiciary while he is on trial for corruption. The request by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel (התנועה לאיכות השלטון בישראל) intensifies a brewing showdown between Netanyahu’s government and the judiciary, which it is trying to overhaul in a contentious plan that has sparked widespread opposition.

The Movement leaders have demanded that the court force Netanyahu to obey the law and sanction him either with a fine or prison time for not doing so. It’s repeated refrain is “He is not above the law” (הוא לא מעל החוק). The fast-paced legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory and toward a burgeoning constitutional crisis. After the last election, Netanyahu put together a coalition larded with far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties in order to maintain power . . . something which has many Israelis both angry and on edge. It has potentially buried a dagger into the heart of Israeli democracy. For the first time in the State of Israel’s nearly 75 year history, the words
”anarchy” (אנרכיה) and “dictatorship” (רודנות) are being heard.

As I’m editing this blog just prior to recording, word has gone out over the Internet that Bibi has abruptly fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for challenging his judicial overhaul plan. Gallant, a former senior general, had called for a pause in the controversial legislation until after next month’s Independence Day holidays, citing the turmoil in the ranks of the military. This is big stuff; Bibi’s government is pushing for a Knesset (parliament) vote this week on a bill that would give his governing coalition the final say over all judicial appointments. It also seeks to grant the Knesset the authority to override Supreme Court decisions by a simple majority and give the coalition the final say over all judicial appointments. Can you say “constitutional crisis?” (משבר חוקתי).

Bibi and his allies say their plan will restore a balance between the judicial and executive branches and “rein in” what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies. It sounds to me like they are taking a page out of the MAGA/Clown-Car-Caucus playbook

These are indeed perilous and most jarring times. Those who were once considered part of the extreme right are now considered the newly emerging center. Where once experience, education, good judgement, diplomacy, and civility were keys to successful leadership, brutishness, extreme commonality, narcissism, the use of fear and a “what’s in it for me” attitude have become central to attracting followers and acolytes . . . people who will follow come hell or high water.

Citizens in India and France, Israel and the U.S.A., have, of late, come to a breaking point; they are fed up with so-called leaders who refuse to listen to their voices, heed their majority wishes or act like adults. They see in these “leaders” men and women whose main concern is feeding their followers a daily diet of mis- and disinformation, and setting up straw dogs whom the public can both fear and hate. In this way, they believe they can keep their followers’ votes and their backers’ dollars. In so many countries, the concept of e pluribus unum (Latin for “out of many, one”) to Après moi, le déluge (French for “after me, the deluge” - King Louis XV’s bon mot which stands for leaving a place or job and predicting disaster or chaos after their departure). What a way to live life!

Much of what made Inga and Paul so desperate in Isn’t Life Wonderful? was that their reality had been turned upside down. Where once, despite their poverty, they led lives worth living, now they had to subsist on horse turnips or, if lucky, a single potato per day. But unlike many of we moderns, they refused to spend their days and nights trying figure out who or what was to blame for the vast changes their lives had undergone. Somehow, they understood that life’s complexities could not be overcome or fixed through vapid simplicity. Despite everything, the came to realize by the film’s end, that they had one another to love, to share with and cheer on . . . the basic ingredients which helped them conclude that indeed, Life is Wonderful.