Civilizations pass through periods of madness, irrationality, and attraction to collective inner demons.  Germany, post-World War One, suffered economic chaos, the feeling of being straitjacketed by the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty, bad and ineffective government, and no sense of where the ship was headed at a time when, in Weimar Republic Berlin, as William S. Burroughs in The Western Lands puts it, "Cocaine is cheaper than food."
     Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film, Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), the movie that made Marlene Dietrich a star, depicts the attraction towards self-destruction in the character of a Professor (Emil Jannings) who enters the orbit of Dietrich's nightclub singer, a sexy but in some ways bland woman who brings the Professor down to the level of a servile pet, his career in education ruined, reduced to a stage performer of the meanest variety.  When we first see him in the film, he's teaching a class, he's in control of himself, he might be a bore, but he has yet to imagine the degradation he'll soon suffer daily.
     Dietrich plays the classic femme fatale.  Her stage outfit includes a top hat, garter belt, and stockings showing off the entirety of the future Hollywood star's world famous legs.  The man's hat hints at something von Sternberg saw in Dietrich: a masculinity expressing dominance over weak men.  In his later film, Blonde Venus, in a dance and song number, he has her wearing a gorilla suit.  She takes off the suit, revealing a tuxedo underneath.
     Blonde Venus, released in 1932, though made in Hollywood after von Sternberg achieved noteworthy success with Der Blaue Engel, retains, as do all the von Sternberg-Dietrich collaborations, a Germanic cinema ambiance of unreality masking tumultuous times of economic depression and growing public desire for the leadership principle to activate, to save civilization from irreversible erosion.
     Benito Mussolini in Italy, having "saved" his country by seizing power in 1922, served as an inspiration to Adolf Hitler, working his own steady and slow magic in Germany.  Hitler was elected, voted into office, by the German people, holding the position of Chancellor from January 1933.  Franklin Roosevelt also was voted into office and assumed the Presidency in March 1933.
     Leadership.  Let's get things done, turn the vehicle around, the old ways aren't working.  In Germany and America, both countries endowed with dream factories (state of the art moviemaking facilities), economic programs got under way; the state got involved in fixing the problems.  In Germany, a hidden agenda of assembling a war machine to eventually expand German territory at the expense of other nations resulted in a massive military-industrial enterprise that fucked over Europe.  In America, the economic recovery was greatly aided by U.S. entry into World War Two, for the government became the customer, rather than civilians with little cash to spend.
     Germans fell for Hitler.  He denounced the conditions of the Versailles Treaty.  Germans agreed.  Expansion outward to the east to make living space for those supposedly deserving it rang true to those living in a centrally located country with the hated France to the west, and Poland and the Soviet Union to the east.  Hatred and resentment of Jews was older than the Middle Ages.  Racism, obsession with national identity, a looking back to an idealized past, collective folk stupidity.  Modern industrialized nations are not immune from these symptoms of civilizations in crisis.
     Make America Great Again, Trump's slogan adorning his campaign baseball caps, declares that America isn't currently great.  It implies a looking back to a time when it was.  That we Americans, in voting for Trump, the strong leader, will do what it takes to reestablish that greatness.  The word again makes it seem as if Trump identifies with a mythic hero, Ronald Reagan perhaps, a showbiz performer, like Trump, whose first name even rhymes with Donald.
     My country's current relationship with irrationality should scare everyone on the planet.  When a powerful nation has embraced stupid, short-sighted men like Trump, and not given him the heave ho from news networks that air his blather regardless of its content--as he inflames bigots and racists against their fellow Americans, and non-Christians overseas--it's a sad fact the inciter has won by planting his ass on the nation's face, refusing to move, as the press, like the Professor in Der Blaue Engel, obeys the signals from the gorilla wearing the tuxedo.

                                                                             Vic Neptune