I will not be Rolf

“I will not be Rolf.”

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve said that over the course of the last few years. It’s a mantra, a ward against a creeping darkness I see in my own country, even amongst my closest friends. I grew up in a Christian, conservative world. Homeschool, Focus on the Family, co-ops, Veggie Tales. This is my birthright. From my earliest moments I was taught the importance of faith, honor, and duty. I’ve come a long way from the fold, but in a lot of ways I never left. It’s more than just lip-service. The life I live today is that of a Navy sailor, bound both by an oath to the Constitution and a commitment to the sanctity of our human endeavor.

It is this oath that pits me against the creeping darkness I see enveloping my homeland. It is the siren song of Christian Nationalism, an ideology that uses a cloak of patriotic virtue to disguise its tyrannical foundation. By “Christian Nationalism,” I mean a political project that seeks to fuse a preferred brand of Christianity with state power—privileging that faith in law and public institutions at the expense of equal citizenship for all. It promises a return to strength and moral purity, but it does so by betraying the very revolutionary ideals that I swear to defend. Betrayal is what ties me to Rolf, the tragic figure from The Sound of Music. He serves as both a fictional foil and a stark warning. A foil, of the threat that far-right ideologues pose to the hearts and minds of good people. A warning, of the painful consequences of ceding one’s own intellectual initiative.

For the uninitiated, Rolf is introduced as the story’s love interest quite early on—confessing his love, and singing about coming of age. Coming of age in Austria in 1938, his struggle with the rise of Nazism is central to the story. The pull that he feels towards sacrificing community for ideology is powerful; it’s a pull he eventually succumbs to. In the movie’s final act Rolf turns in his friends and fully embraces the takeover of his homeland by the Nazi regime.

We do not live in 1938 and we are not fictional characters in a period piece. Nevertheless, we live in a time where the siren’s call is broadcast from stadium stages in Arizona. When political figures like Stephen Miller take the stage and promise to defeat forces of darkness and evil, they are singing Rolf’s song. They are crafting a movement in search of a cause, and in doing so preying on the good intentions of millions. The warnings of a nation under siege are nothing more than the battle cries of rebels intent on poisoning the well of the American experiment.

This movement, this contradiction in terms, is hellbent on reshaping our land in its own image. Using the true faith of millions as cover, radicals at the forefront of American politics are at this very moment threatening to strip us of our hard-fought freedoms. Christian Nationalists view America’s pluralistic republic not as a hope-filled beacon, but as an existential threat. Rewriting American history, far-right ideologues want to turn away from our shared heritage and betray the American revolution itself—by offering a return to the very Old World system of religious tyranny and state-compelled belief against which the Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

I will not be Rolf.