‘There are a lot of parallels in the treatment of Trump by the Republican Party and the treatment of Captain Queeg by his own crew, in particular, the officers of the USS Caine.’
to begin with, yeslthe Caine Mutiny was a remarkable movie, even though it was almost not made because the Navy refused to acknowledge even a fictitious mutiny;) and yes there could be parallels to Trump, if we look hard enough...I think Hanson’s allusion to Queeg was rearding his downfall, his obdurate belief that everyone was plotting to get him, to toss him aside, leading to that memorable scene with the strawberries(the strawberries, that’s where I had them), and the inevitable clicking of the balls in his hand, signifying his descent into unreality...
as far as the identifying the Caine officers with recalcitrant party members, yes, the duplicitous Keefer (a bang up performance by MacMurry) fits the bill, except that in politics, unlike the Navy, all things are fair game, and to think that blind faith and loyalty is a political trope is pure lunacy...I don’t think the party members you singled out for derision resemble Keefer so much as Willie Keith, who seemed happy enough to come out on whichever side he felt had the upper hand...Keefer at least had a cause (revolting as it may have been, but Keith wobbled in between adulation and repudiation of Queeg, and seeing the wounded captain, cast his lot with the despicable Keefer...all of this could have been brought out in the movie had Robert Francis not been such a limited actor (brutal seems too harsh, but truer) and for that matter, Van Johnson could have fleshed out Maryk’s character much better, he was perfecly capable of portraying a man who’s attempting to discern truth among shifting points of view and events...
whatever, it is interesting to apply fictitious occurences to true happenings, a societal mirror, so to speak, which topnotch writers like Wouk could hold up to us so we can use our brains to think more clearly...
Good post, I enjoyed it! Well said, even if we disagree on some things.
Yes, it is politics and not the military that is true, so any expectation of “blind faith and loyalty” is indeed far fetched.
I abhor blind faith, but that is not what I am referring to. And loyalty? Well, Trump can be faulted for assuming that the mechanics of business and politics were close enough to expect loyalty from those he appointed. From them he deserved only two things: loyalty, or self termination by the subject. The party as a whole is different, but conservative America elected them and deserved better from them.
But, as I said in another post, there is a hierarchy that should be observed.