Over the last few days, I've been watching an Amazon Prime series called The Man in the High Castle. It ran for four seasons from 2016 to 2019, comprising ten episodes per season, and it was about an alternative world, once in which Germany and Japan won the second world war and divided up the United States and most of the globe.
In the series, the Nazis control two thirds of the continent from the eastern seaboard west to eastern Montana in the north to the Texas panhandle in the south. The Japanese empire controls the western or Pacific states of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, as well as Alaska and Hawaii. Separating the two powers is an area called the Neutral Zone consisting of greater Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado and New Mexico.
In this parallel world, Germany develops the A bomb first and successfully deploys it on Washington D.C., London and Moscow. All three nations eventually surrender, the U.S. being the last to capitulate on September 18, 1947, a date which the series denotes as VA (Victory over America) Day. FDR, Churchill and Stalin are all executed for war "crimes" against the Reich.
On the west coast, Japan launches an all-out invasion, seizing control of the port cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. Those who defy the occupation are executed and, in an ironic twist, some Americans are sent to interment camps to be "re-educated" into the Japanese way of living. Some Japanese citizens move to San Francisco and it eventually becomes something of a second capital: Tokyo East.
Just as they had done in Europe, the Nazis target anyone they feel is racially inferior. Jews and African Americans are rounded up and sent to death camps. A precious few manage to escape to the Neutral Zone where they live in fear from bounty hunters. The Zone itself is so uncivilized it makes the legendary town of Dodge City from the TV series Gunsmoke look like the Garden of Eden by comparison.
The title character - played by Stephen Root - is a man who's in possession of films that depict a different outcome to the war, one in which the Allies prevail. He spends most of the series running from both the Nazis and the Japanese, but along the way he allows the films to be seen by certain people who then become part of the resistance.
Set in the 1960s - specifically 1962-64 - the series is brutally honest in its depiction of what life would be like under both Nazi and Imperial Japanese rule. Total loyalty is expected from the population and torture is used on dissidents. Anyone suspected of spreading propaganda or engaging in "immoral" behavior, i.e. homosexuality, is either killed or sent to re-education camps.
Both empires employ secret police - the S.S. and the FBI, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, in the Greater American Reich; the Kenpeitai in the Japanese Pacific States- that monitor every facet of society from phone calls to large gatherings. The raids they conduct act as a deterrent and maintain the state's grip on power.
This is not the first time Hollywood has posited an alternative ending to World War II. In a Star Trek episode titled The City on the Edge of Forever, Dr. McCoy accidentally changes history and delays the entry of the United States into the War, thus allowing Germany to complete its heavy water experiments and capture the world. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock eventually restore history. But in this series, both worlds exist parallel to each another.
We know this because the Germans develop a portal in a tunnel in the Poconos that allows for travel between both worlds. It is at this point that Reichsführer John Smith discovers that his son, Thomas, who was euthanized because he had a genetic defect in his world, is alive and well and living with another Smith family in the other. That John Smith is an insurance salesman who manages to eke out a meager living for himself and his family. The Nazi Smith is obsessed with bringing the other Thomas back through the portal, even though he knows he would most likely be rejected and despised by him.
On the opposite coast, the Japanese Trade minister Nobusuke Tagomi also discovers an alternative existence, one in which he and his wife move to the U.S. after the defeat of Japan. They have a son who goes on to marry an American woman and have a son of their own. Tagomi is an embarrassment to his family because of his drinking and carousing, and his one significant contribution is that he manages to get a hold of a film of the Americans testing a hydrogen bomb in the Marshall Islands; and as Trade minister, he ends up giving it to his chief inspector who then shows it to Smith in New York in an attempt to convince the Nazi leader that if the Germans attack, the Japanese have the ability to annihilate them. The fact that the bomb in question was built by the Americans is never disclosed to Smith.
Beyond the various subplots and twists of the series there is one inescapable truth. For all the high-sounding words that have been written and spoken about American exceptionalism over the many years, it was incredibly easy for the Germans to Nazify the United States. Indeed, in that world, the resistance movement represents a very small percentage of the overall population. The vast majority of it is comprised mainly of two groups: the cowed and the worshipers. The former live in absolute terror and keep whatever feelings of antipathy they have for their overlords to themselves; the latter not only drinks the Kool-Aid, they bath in it. For them the Reich has become their god, for all intents and purposes, and their allegiance to the Führer and the Arian way of life is absolute and unquestioned. From the music they listen to, to the books they read, to the movies and TV programs they watch, they are in complete lockstep with fascism and all that it represents.
Indeed, John Smith's conversion was emblematic of so many in the country. He had been an officer in the army during the War and had seen Washington nuked. A fellow officer stopped by with some food for him, his wife and newborn son. Along with the food were arm bands that bore the swastika on them. The inference was clear: the food and survival in exchange for allegiance. It took him all of 30 seconds to make up his mind. It was just an arm band, he rationalized, no different than switching baseball teams.
How many John Smiths are there in the United States today? How many would trade their freedom for security? How many flirt with nationalism, not realizing that it's just another word for fascism? For every person who recoils at the notion of a fascist state enveloping the country, there are many more who are oblivious to it or, worse, perfectly fine with it.
This week, the Conservative Political Action Conference - CPAC for short - is holding its annual convention in Orlando, Florida. Time was that CPAC conventions would feature actual conservatives who spoke about things like lower taxes, less regulation, greater self reliance. Nowadays, it has become nothing more than an extension of Trump, his sycophants and their grievances. In less than five years, the party of Reagan has become the party of Trump.
It has been a stunning and frightening transformation to behold, but what has been equally appalling to watch are the growing number of people who literally worship the ground Trump walks on. They may not represent the majority of Americans, but they are hardly insignificant. Indeed, the way in which they have deified this man is very reminiscent of what the Germans did with Hitler.
Historians and political scientists have opined at great length on Hitler's rise to power. The explanation is quite simple: Hitler promised to restore order and greatness to Germany. He took a demoralized nation and within a few years brought it to the brink of world domination. That the Nazi regime was brutal and perverted was irrelevant to the millions of people whose lives had been transformed. Like John Smith, all they cared about was their own personal safety and security. They neither knew nor cared about the atrocities that were being perpetrated against their fellow citizens, or the freedoms they were giving up in exchange for that safety and security.
How did someone like Trump rise to power in the United States? By basically promising the same things Hitler did. Trump ran on two central themes: 1) law and order and 2) making America great again. Above all else, people look for simplicity in a complicated, confusing and ever-changing world. Trump took advantage of a broken political system and preyed on the insecurities of a vulnerable electorate to win the presidency in 2016. And like any good despot, he solidified his hold over his party to such an extent that he came within a whisker of pulling off a coup on January 6.
Do not kid yourselves for one moment. We dodged a helluva bullet last month. We came dangerously close to losing our democracy. And we are not out of the woods yet. As we speak, Republican legislatures are actively working to ensure that a repeat performance in 2024 will be successful. The establishment Republicans, or what's left of them, are staying silent out of fear of reprisal, and the few that have spoken out have already been censured or threatened with censure.
Tomorrow, Trump will speak at CPAC. He will again repeat the great lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. And the millions of people who tune in to watch him will believe that lie. He has become their golden calf, their god, their end all be all, and there is absolutely nothing they would not do on his behalf. For them, January 6 was just a trial run.
As things stand now, Trump is the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination in 2024, should he decide to run. If that happens, and assuming he isn't convicted of a crime before then, the nation will be dragged through a scenario so ghastly that it would give even the Founding Fathers nightmares over it.
Someone once asked Benjamin Franklin what type of country we had: a republic or a monarchy. "A republic," Franklin replied, "if you can keep it."
We will know soon enough which it is.
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