On ‘Casablanca’ lessons

I happen to be a Bogart fan, so I was intrigued to see what Keith Raffel had to say on Jan. 23 (The lesson of “Casablanca”) about how a famous film was being used. I wasn’t expecting a fluff piece, it was of course the opinion page, but what an opinion I read. It was full of whimsy, insight and personality. Without getting into the politics, what I read was we can look back and find in all our artistic pursuits, I would say not just films, our common human aspirations for community and goodness not infamy.

“Casablanca” has a lot of Nazis and maybe Mr. Raffel wants you to believe there are a lot of Nazis hiding in the current president’s administration. Though I think the ICE agents are wearing brown shirts, I don’t believe them Nazis. I myself think rather than Hitler, it is better to compare the current president to Napoleon. Coming out of a government that strove for equality and freedom, therefore the improvement of all, France got instead Napoleon who made himself an Emperor. Do you remember the post of Trump with the crown?

Mr. Raffel says we should stick our necks out for our beliefs and that we are not doing so. In a nation of well over 300 million, all of us protesting, marching, loudly expressing our opinions is a lot to expect. But voting our beliefs, informed by our common human aspirations, is not a lot to ask. In the upcoming 2026 elections, refusing to return the sycophants clutching to the current presidency is the way to return to our aspirations of goodness and humanity. I’m afraid if I stick my neck out, I would be a “usual suspect” and my fate the same as the example from Mr. Raffel’s second paragraph.

William Scherer

Wood Dale