How Glinda The Good Is The Top-Down Morality Leader Liberals Crave
Sadly, reality is more complicated.
Wicked: For Good ends — spoilers, obviously — with Glinda (Ariana Grande) staging a coup with the help of Elphaba’s (Cynthia Erivo) flying monkey army. Glinda deposes the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and dispatches the sinister Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) with a perky James Bond-inspired quip. Glinda becomes the new benevolent leader of Oz — although, there’s apparently no election. She’s just the next in line. It’s like the British Royal Family or the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. Nonetheless, she immediately reverses the Wizard’s discriminatory policies against Animals, who we see returning to their former places in a seemingly free society.
So, yes, that’s incredibly naive, but no one should confuse the Wicked films for a political documentary. There are flying monkeys, after all, and Ken Burns doesn’t even narrate. However, the fantasies we enjoy reveal a lot about us. They speak to how we wish the world actually works. Wicked: For Good doesn’t stray far from the framework of the musical, which premiered in 2003 during the George W. Bush administration. Its ending is perhaps a more alarming statement in the Trump age.
Glinda was a willing member of the Wizard/Morrible’s fascist regime. She enabled their lies and watched their oppression unfold from the comfort of her phony bubble. It’s true that she probably doesn’t personally believe in or supports their fascist policies, but she obviously didn’t oppose them enough to jump on the broom with Elphaba at the end of the first Wicked movie. Yes, it’s convenient for her to reject the anti-Animal policies, but why should the Animal refugees trust her? Wicked fans have argued that Glinda couldn’t clear Elphaba’s name — the propaganda ran too deep. Yet, if she can’t do that, how could she effectively counter the anti-Animal propaganda that had oppressed them?
Wicked is a story that wears its Nazi allegory boldly on its sleeve. Glinda the Good Nazi declaring an immediate end to Animal oppression is very different from how the actual Holocaust ended. The Allies wholly defeated Nazi Germany. No one who hung out with Hitler and Mengele was put in charge. They were all literally hanged. Nazi hype man Julius Sebastian Streicher was convicted of crimes against humanity, specifically because he was found to have continued his antisemitic propaganda campaign when he was well aware that the Nazis were murdering Jews. Considering how complicit Glinda was in the Wizard’s reign of terror, she should’ve split town with Dorothy. Instead, she establishes a new order based entirely on lies. She even helps burn her former friend in effigy. Political movements, no matter how seemingly benign, that require demonizing literal strawman foes never end well.
In our own reality, it’s definitely good news when Republican women revolt against their leadership, but Marjorie Taylor Greene, Elise Stefanik, and Nancy Mace aren’t anyone’s allies but their own. Both Stefanik and Mace supported the LGBTQ community when they believed it was popular to do so. In 2021, Mace claimed she had “friends and family that identify as LGBTQ … Understanding how they feel and how they’ve been treated is important. Having been around gay, lesbian, and transgender people has informed my opinion over my lifetime.” By 2024, she was demonizing her trans colleague Sarah McBride and publicly hurling transphobic slurs.
Glinda watched as her Animal professor, Dr. Dillamond, was arrested in the middle of class and dragged off by the Wizard’s ICE-like goons. Later, she expressed annoyance that anyone was still upset about “that old goat.” Maybe she really changed (for good) but what about the thugs who manhandled Dr. Dillamond and stuffed him in a cage?
The infamous Nuremberg Defense is that you can’t hold someone accountable for following orders from a superior officer, official, or the state. This was rightly rejected at the Nuremberg trials under the Nuremberg Principle IV that stated “the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
If the Nuremberg Defense argues that otherwise decent people can become Nazis if given Nazi orders, then it also suggests the reverse — that seemingly terrible people can become “good” if given “good” orders. Unfortunately, far too many liberals believe in this sort of top-down morality. Back in 2020, Joe Biden said repeatedly on the campaign trail that Republicans would have an “epiphany” after Donald Trump was finally defeated and suddenly become reasonable governing partners. Just a few months ago, Chuck Schumer insisted that his Senate Republican gym buddies would turn on Trump once he was sufficiently unpopular. This is all about as realistic as the “Brand New Day” number in The Wiz when the Wicked Witch of the West’s evil spells on the populace immediately end upon her death. Everybody rejoice! (Watch below.)
It’s pleasing to imagine that a fascist regime can end once you get rid of the current leader. Darth Vader hurls the Emperor to his Disney Villain Death, and a few hours later, everyone across the galaxy is celebrating democracy’s return. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, a friend’s neighbor in Brooklyn told her to come outside and join the folks who were partying “like the end of Return of the Jedi.” Of course, while liberals celebrated, Republicans plotted their way back to power. The Star Wars sequels have their flaws, but the First Order eerily predicts a supposed vanquished post-Bush GOP becoming the more dangerous MAGA.
The Democrats’ own brand of “top-down morality” is on display when they give speeches at LGBTQ events but are somehow caught flat-footed when there’s vicious pushback against the community, particularly trans people. Glinda might offer some pretty words about Animal inclusivity, but the true test is how she responds when her own position is potentially threatened by her support. Does she stand firm for what’s right or does she immediately start negotiating? “OK, we should definitely let Animals speak, as long as they only start learning language when they’re adults, but there are some legitimate concerns about Animals teaching humans.”
Evil only thrives because a significant number of people support it. We are alway capable of making a moral choice. Perhaps that choice is not the most immediately pleasant one, but the choice still exists. Of course, many people will always choose evil and cruelty, like the racist lady working at Cinnabon. Oh, I should clarify that while Cinnabon is a questionable place of business, that’s not the evil and cruel choice.
The racist lady at the Wisconsin Cinnabon mocked a woman wearing a hijab and gleefully boasted that she was a racist, while freely uttering racial slurs. (She has since lost her job.) Wicked is a work of fiction, so its happy ending can rely on the Wizard and Morrible alone imposing hatred upon the populace. In our reality, though, leaders like the Wizard tap into and exploit hatred that already exists. Resisting it will require exiting our bubbles and joining the fight.
It is indeed shocking how many people, when given the choice to be their worst selves, take it. This has been the hardest, worst lesson of the Trump reign of error.