Why I Started Writing About Politics

We’ve gotten a little off track from what we normally write about here — travel adventures, home projects where mistakes are inevitably made, the odd obsessions. So I figured I should explain what happened.

I’ve been concerned about the direction and polarization of this country for a while. 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. Without fail, the conversation drifted in a political direction. It’s almost impossible for it not to right now, given how many people are unhappy about things that have become wedges politicians use to divide us and stay in 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, partly because it had a personal connection. My parents were both 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 lifetimes, and they lived through the war and the bombings, far removed in very rural areas from where the worst atrocities happened.

Like a lot of people, I used to wonder how those atrocities could happen and how people just went along with it. When I asked my parents about it, they said it kind of surprised them at first, and then everyone lived in fear that if they didn’t stay in line the Nazis would come for them next.

The terms “fascism” and “Nazi Germany” have been used a lot to describe tactics in this country in the last couple of years, and I’ve seen the ways some try to control the press narrative, the immigration obsession, the rest of it. So I decided to actually go look — what were the real similarities between the United States in 2025 and Germany at the start of Hitler’s rise to power in 1933? That sent me down a rabbit hole.

I’ve always wanted to explore what’s broken in this country and why, but it turned out to be like peeling an onion — the more I peeled, the more I felt I had to keep going. That’s how this writing started. Research-based when I can be, nonpartisan in method, and aimed at the people in the middle who are trying to make sense of all of it.

The extremes on either side aren’t going to see it that way, and that’s part of the problem too. People on both sides perceive bias in news coverage that doesn’t exist, and start to read neutrality itself as opposition to their viewpoint. If you say something true that doesn’t favor one team, both teams think you’re the enemy.

I’m going to keep writing anyway. There are more people in the middle than the loudest voices suggest, and I think those people deserve work that respects them enough to do the homework before making the argument.

That’s what I’m trying to do here.