We’ve gotten a little off track from what we normally write about here—our travel adventures, home projects where mistakes are inevitably made, and our odd obsessions. So I figured I should explain what happened.
I’ve been concerned about the direction and polarization of this country for some time. I consider myself open-minded and not on any political team. I have my own perspective, but I try to understand why people see things the way they do and what motivates their actions and beliefs. I think things have gone off the rails in the Trump era, though we were headed down this path long before.
Over the holidays, as we gathered with family, certain topics came up. Somehow, without fail, the conversation drifted in a political direction. It’s almost impossible for it not to, given how many people are dissatisfied with things that have become wedges politicians use to divide us and retain power. The conversation turned to healthcare—one of the most broken systems we have in this country. People tend to agree on the problems, but political tactics make it very difficult to agree on solutions.
That conversation ended with someone saying people are equating the current US political climate to Nazi Germany, and the other person quickly clarifying, “Oh no, I’m not saying that. I don’t think we’re there.” That exchange stuck with me. It had a personal connection—my parents were born in the early 1930s during the rise of the Nazi party. My father was born in Yugoslavia in 1931 and my mother in East Prussia in 1934. The party rose to power in their early lifetime, and they lived through the war and bombings, far removed in very rural areas from where the worst atrocities occurred.
Like many people, I used to wonder how such atrocities could happen and how people just went along with it. When I asked my parents about it, they said it sort of surprised them, and then people lived in fear that the Nazis would come for them if they didn’t stay in line.
The terms “fascism” and “Nazi Germany” have been used to describe tactics in this country, and I’ve seen the ways some try to control the press narrative, the immigration obsession, and more. So I decided to explore what the real similarities were between the US in 2025 and Germany at the start of Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Boy, that sent me down a rabbit hole.
I’ve always wanted to explore what’s broken in this country and why, but it was like peeling an onion—the more I peeled, the more I felt I had to explore. And here we are, with a bunch of hopefully research-based, nonpartisan posts. I think the extremes won’t see it that way, but I found something worth exploring about that problem as well—the phenomenon where people on both sides perceive bias in news coverage even when it doesn’t exist, seeing neutrality itself as opposition to their viewpoint.
Even that's Odd 
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