Hans Landa (left) and Monsieur LaPadite (right) discuss the Dreyfus family.

Most of what’s been said about the current controversies surrounding immigration and refugees and executive orders resides in my list of liked tweets on Twitter. We know that it’s an immigration ban indirectly intended to affect Muslims, thanks to Rudy Giuliani. We know that the countries listed on the ban do not follow any sort of logical rules put forth by Trump and are more than likely carefully selected so as not to harm his businesses with ties overseas. We know that no part of government was prepared for the effects of the ban, including the ongoing backlash, least of which was the executive branch. So we know a lot of things, even if our glorious leader does not.

First, it should be made clear how wrong this ban is. I believe we have to welcome people whose lives are being destroyed in their home countries and I do not believe that it should be up for debate. We are not going to be attacked by the refugees and even if we were, I would never stop believing that helping them was and will continue to be the right thing to do. Jeff Winger from Community said it best when he argued, “helping only ourselves is bad and helping each other is good.” It’s a singular, inarguable truth.

The United States is a country that is built on altruism and right now, it seems like there is another force at play and it is stronger and it is more powerful. Often considered the opposite of altruism, egoism is the idea that self-interest can be a foundation for one’s own morality. Right now, it feels like we are all living by what Donald Trump believes is best for himself. And if it’s best for him, why wouldn’t it be good for the rest of us? He could not even begin to fathom why.

To deny refugees from the country is to deny altruism and the possibility that by helping our fellow man, we are strengthened and we become a better country and we help make a better world. It is incredibly dangerous to blindly accept the false notion that if we sacrifice our morality, we can be made safer and more secure just because the idea that there is anything potentially harmful about taking in the very same people the Statue of Liberty encourages us to embrace has been repeatedly parroted to us by bigots.

And if you are inclined to believe that, no matter what, America has to come first, then I encourage you to turn your attention to Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 Best Picture nominee, Inglourious Basterds. In the opening scene, which is about nineteen minutes long, a German S.S. officer enters the home of a French dairy farmer who is known to be hiding a Jewish family, the Dreyfuses, underneath his floor because it is 1941 in Nazi-occupied France. You can watch a bit of the scene in this clip here:

The scene begins with Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), the officer, acting kindly and genially to Monsieur LaPadite (Denis Menochet) and his daughters, even paying them compliments and exercising a great deal of politeness as he gratefully drinks a glass of their milk. If it wasn’t for his uniform, the audience might be inclined to believe that Landa has arrived in the name of peace and goodwill. Slowly, Landa is revealed to be more and more of a monster, beginning with his line, “I love rumors. Facts can be so misleading,” continuing into his nonchalant idolizing of his nickname, The Jew Hunter, and culminating with the murder of the Jewish family hiding silently underneath his feet, sans Shoshanna.

There is an absurd amount of tension throughout this scene, not because they show the Dreyfuses pressing their hands to their mouths so as not to make a sound, but because Landa knows the family is under the floorboards and LaPadite knows that Landa knows this. When Landa eventually gives LaPadite the ultimatum of saving his own family or losing his daughters and the Dreyfuses, a tearful LaPadite concedes and reveals the exact spots in which the Dreyfuses are hiding. It is tough to know when exactly LaPadite figures out what Landa is doing. It could be when he requests a switch from speaking French to speaking English, so the Dreyfuses cannot understand them. It could be when Landa provides the example of treating a rat with hostility in the home even if it didn’t do anything because, “you don’t like them and you don’t know why you don’t like them, you just find them repulsive.” Clearly, Landa is discussing this as a metaphor for Jewish people (and it would be insulting enough to compare an entire religion of people to rats). But these two instances can tell the audience more than just LaPadite’s own realization.

First, by the readiness with which they switch languages, the audience knows that Landa is not opposed to diversity, in general. In fact, he’s solely focused on his hatred of one group of people. He has no ill-will towards the French people or the German people or anyone except the Jewish people and he is intent on fulfilling his nickname to the best of his chillingly capable ability.

The audience knows Landa to be anti-Semitic before he even begins detailing the story of the rat, which simply serves to reinforce just how evil this guy really is. He repeatedly tells LaPadite that he is “just doing his job,” a sign that egoism rules Landa to his core. And even though LaPadite divulges the knowledge of where the Dreyfuses are hiding, is he not being altruistic to save his daughters by doing so? He is saving the lives of as many people as he can even if one family is already a lost cause and he does so with tears streaming down his face. Is there no authenticity here? Is there no altruism? He did all he could to hide a refugee family at a time of dire need. He did all he could and no matter how many times Monsieur LaPadite tells himself this, it will never be enough.

So we have to remember this lesson as our country barrels forth into a new era of uncertainty and terror. We all hope that, God forbid if something akin to the Holocaust were to happen in America, we would act altruistically, but if Steve Bannon came knocking on our door, asking for a glass of milk and making us decide between the refugees we were hiding and our own family, would we put ourselves first? Would such an act be altruism or egoism? Are we merely a part of the problem? Issues like that are never as black and white as the fact that banning refugees is wrong and welcoming them is right.

But there is no gray area with the fact that putting the needs of Americans before the needs of all other Americans is an outright rejection of altruism and it is the absolute wrong thing to do. And a matter like this should not even be a partisan problem. It should be a problem revolving around being a decent human being or not.

It is no secret that the statistics have shown time and again that fear of refugees is foolish, misguided fear. Similar to being afraid of a rat, there is no reason for it, but it is stoked by what people believe is worthy of our horror. To compare a Muslim person to a rat is a disgrace in itself. But they bear at least one similarity in that they are both innocent and not worthy of prejudice in any form. Our own fears should be directed domestically, at the people who are attempting to enforce this disgraceful executive order. By continuing with this course of action, our “so-called” leaders are threatening America more than any foreign terrorist ever could. All of the greatest empires have crumbled from the inside and what is transpiring right now is not democracy or freedom. It is fear and it is totalitarianism. Yes, of course it makes sense to be afraid of a dictator taking over America. But a dictatorship can only survive if there is fear. To ban these people who need our help, that only serves to cultivate more fear and, in turn, more willingness to accept the idea that our country’s people are more valuable than any other country’s.

We have to fight for humanity. It transcends whatever might be considered “the American way.” The American way is diversity and it is immigration. To think otherwise is to ignore the warnings being shouted at us by history of itself. Even though it’s fiction, Inglourious Basterds shows us that history is coming. And it’s going to ask us for a glass of milk.

Next week: Black History Month, empathy, and To Kill a Mockingbird.