Last night, we watched the 1939 film Stagecoach on PBS. Stagecoach, as you may know, was a John Ford western that gave John Wayne (one of the worst actors of the 20th century, by the way) his first important, big role, and was nominated for seven Oscars. This post is not going to be a review of the film (let me just say, today those seven nominations would not have been given out), but something different, something more contemporary.

First, though, we have to review the simple plot. It is the west (filmed on the Utah/Arizona border), and it is the story of a commercial stage coach traveling from one town to another, carrying seven passengers, and having two drivers. The seven passengers are a mix: a prostitute, the wife of a U.S. soldier looking to rejoin her husband, a wealthy banker absconding with $50,000 of someone else’s money, a 24/7 drunken doctor, a liquor traveling salesman, a gambler, and a prison escapee looking for revenge against a man who killed his mother and brother (that’s John Wayne, of course).

There is a lot of tension between this mixture of passengers, and along the way, they argue back and forth, and the group faces a number of challenges. But the biggest challenge comes when the stagecoach is attacked by what must be about 100 Apaches. Three of the seven passengers and one of the two drivers are injured by the Apaches, and innumerable attackers are knocked off their horses and probably killed by the group on the stagecoach. But what saves the stagecoach is the U.S. Cavalry, which – with flags, banners and bugles – comes to the rescue.

Here is what I thought, viewing this film in 2025. The stagecoach is the USA itself, filled with a mix of people with different ideas, different abilities and different limitations. All it wants to do is keep moving forward.

The Apaches? That’s MAGA. MAGA wants to cripple the USA, just like the Apaches want to cripple the coach. MAGA wants to eliminate those who currently govern the USA, just like the Apaches want to demobilize the two who are driving the stagecoach. MAGA has its own goals to take over the USA, just as the Apaches undoubtedly had their own goals to take over the stagecoach and its passengers.

But the Apaches failed for two reasons, just as I expect MAGA will fail. The Apaches largely failed because they really had no plan. They were chasing and chasing the stagecoach, but they really didn’t have a plan to stop the coach other than continuing to sling arrows at the stagecoach, and they certainly did not look like they had a set plan for the stagecoach or its passengers.

And then there was the cavalry. The cavalry, beautifully uniformed, universally with perfect riding posture, beautiful horses. The cavalry was the United States of America, the true, true Americans, coming to save their country, here the stagecoach, under attack by yes, another group of Americans. And the cavalry apparently scared the Apaches to death, for the remaining Apaches ran, as they say, for the hills. America was saved.

I know. This is a terrible analogy. And the film’s portrayal of the Apaches as no better than today’s films might portray Hamas attackers is inexcusably politically incorrect. But, as I watched the film, the sense of good guy Americans battling bad guy Americans with those Americans in the stagecoach, who wanted nothing more than to live their lives, was a midrash, you might say, on our current situation.

See you tomorrow. (By the way, “yippie-ki-yay” comes from that old standby “I’m an Old Cow Hand”, which has nothing to do with movie, and even less to do with me.