“Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” — Georges Santayana

I really don’t like musicals. I’ve always had problems taking seriously stories that had to be told via music. That even goes for opera.

But I’ve always had tremendous admiration for the 1972 Bob Fosse film “Cabaret,” starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Gray. I also took in a production closer to home, in 1983 at Olivet College.

I was impressed with Minnelli’s cold, calculating fun girl approach to the character of Sally Bowles. I was even more impressed by Gray’s relentlessly entertaining role as the master of ceremonies.

I was most impressed, however, by the not-so-entertaining story and its lessons.

As the late, great Helen Jane Helmey told me at the Wayland Globe in 1973, it was interesting to watch all the frivolity and jocularity while everything around the main characters was crumbling in the early days of Nazi Germany. They weren’t paying attention and didn’t think they needed to. And in the end, they didn’t understand what was about to hit them.

Bowles, the master of ceremonies and all of the entertainers at the Cabaret were beckoning everyone to “come to the Cabaret” to forget all their troubles, forget all their cares.

The message was that those who had enough money to take in the shows should ignore the troubling developments surrounding them, ignore the persecution of the Jews happening nearby, ignore the bloodless coup in which a constitutional republic was peacefully being replaced by a charismatic, racist and militaristic regime.

It’s been more than 45 years in which I have had nightmares about the concept of too many people partying down and not paying attention to the darker things happening around them. We are constantly exhorted by ubiquitous marketing and advertising to have a good time and focus on cabaret-like spectacles such as the Super Bowl, Dancing with the Stars, celebrity gossip, American Idol and fantasy movies on Netflix rather than examine what has happened and is happening in our nation and world.

Things have gotten so bad in the critical thinking department that we elected a reality TV star with no experience in running government and no common sense approach to dealing with other nations and their leaders.

As the late, great comedian George Carlin said, “But nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care.”

The fault lies in us. We willingly created this mess. We have met the enemy and he is us.

Donald Trump is not the problem. He is just a symptom. We’ve slowly become a combination theocracy and oligarchy with an attitude of hubris and hostility. Meanwhile, it feels like most folks haven’t seemed to notice or care.

I don’t know who said this, but I once read a book of quotations in which the author said that given enough time, people living in democracy or republic will vote away all their freedoms.

And, as the late great George Orwell said, people who vote for tyrants are not victims, they are accomplices.