"Unoccupied France welcomes you to Casablanca," prefect of police Louis Renault (Claude Rains) tells Major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt). His fellow Nazis occupy most of France, and in the early going viewers see a mural of Marshall Philippe Pétain and his famous slogan, "Je tiens mes promesses, meme celles des autres,"—"I keep my promises, even those of others."
Back in 1940, the French World War I veteran, already in his 80s, struck an armistice with the German invaders. The Nazis made Pétain head of their puppet government in Vichy, allowing him to govern parts of France under their supervision. Non-veteran Joe Biden is also 80, and there the similarities begin.
Conrad Black’s quip that Biden is a waxworks effigy of a president is too kind. The Delaware Democrat has trouble with basic motor functions and, for all but the willfully blind, is incapable of exercising national office. On the other hand, Biden is the ideal puppet to keep the promises of others: an axis of globalists, climate warriors, white coat supremacists, abortion celebrants, gender jihadists, institutional racists and Stalinist thugs, panting to take the summer of 2020 to a whole new level.
Under these forces, as in wartime France, people flee to the freer regions and the Vichy types don’t like it. California, for example, is making it harder for those who move to shut down their nonprofit companies, and state Attorney General Rob Bonta once backed a bill that would tax people for 10 years even after they leave.
In "Casablanca," many refugees believe they will never get out, and in the meantime everybody comes to Rick’s. Ugarte (Peter Lorre) tells proprietor Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), "You despise me, don’t you?" Without missing a beat, Rick says, "If I gave you any thought, I probably would," one of the great put-downs of all time.
Ugarte has murdered two German couriers and stolen two letters of transit, guaranteed exit visas, authorized by General Charles de Gaulle. Rick hides the letters in Sam’s (Dooley Wilson) piano, but does nothing to protect Ugarte from the police, proclaiming "I stick my neck out for nobody." That claim will soon face a challenge.